Check it works

Where to look

• Setup, under Configure in the dashboard. It shows First trace received. once any call has arrived.
• Cost Explorer, under Analyze. It lists your calls with their cost.

If Setup still says Waiting for your first trace…, go through the checks below.

First, check these

Is the right organization selected? A key only sends data to the organization it was made in. If you belong to more than one, pick the right one in the switcher at the top of the dashboard.

Does the key have write scope? Scope is what a key is allowed to do. A read key can look but cannot send. Check the Scope column on the API Keys page. If it says read, make a new key with write.

Was the key revoked or replaced? A revoked key stops working. Rotating a key creates a new one and revokes the old one. Use the new key.

Is the call there, but with a blank cost? That is expected in two cases:

• the call did not report how many tokens it used
• ai-tally has no price for that model

ai-tally shows a blank when it cannot know a cost. It never shows a made-up $0. See Prices and blanks.

If you use the proxy

Run your request with curl -i to see the reply. These replies come from the proxy itself, before your call reaches the AI provider:

Reply	What it means	What to do
400 missing tenant key	The X-Tenant-Key header is missing.	Add it. Run echo $TALLY_KEY to check the key is set.
403 unknown tenant key	The key is wrong or revoked, or it is too new.	Check the key. A new key takes about a minute to work.
403 tenant key lacks write scope	The key is a read key.	Make a write key.
403 the hosted proxy is turned off for this organization	The proxy switch is off.	An admin turns on Zero-code proxy on the API Keys page. Wait about a minute.
404 no route for path	The URL is wrong.	Start the URL with https://ingest.ai-tally.com/openai/v1, /anthropic or /gemini.
502 upstream unavailable	The proxy could not reach the AI provider.	Try again.

Any other error comes from the AI provider. For example, a 401 from OpenAI means your OpenAI key is wrong.

Streaming with OpenAI and no cost? Add "stream_options": {"include_usage": true} to your request. Without it, OpenAI does not report token counts on a stream.

If you use the Python SDK

The SDK never crashes your app. So when something is wrong, it writes a warning to your logs instead of raising an error. Turn logging on to see those warnings:

import logging
logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO)

Then check:

• Is TALLY_KEY set where the code runs? A server, a container or a notebook may not see a variable you set in your terminal. Without a key, the SDK logs a warning and records nothing.
• Did a short script exit too soon? Records are sent in the background. Call tally.flush() at the end.
• Is the call made with the official openai or anthropic library? Only those two are recorded automatically.

If you use OpenTelemetry

Look at the reply code your trace exporter gets:

• 401 means the key is missing or wrong. The header must be authorization=Bearer <your key>.
• 403 means the key is a read key.
• 429 means slow down. Wait the number of seconds in the Retry-After header.

Also check two settings:

• The URL must end in /v1/otlp/traces.
• The format must be http/json. ai-tally does not accept the binary protobuf format.

Next

Still stuck? Open the dashboard and check Setup again after each fix. Changes to keys and the proxy switch take about a minute.