Your project cost $5k in tokens? How does that work? over what time? My understanding is that most developers are given pro max plans at $200/m and are expected to max that out.
I've been getting by on the $200/year plan by smoothing usage continuously over time.
The pay per use is for the API so does it mean you're using the API in a custom setup?
Maxed out the 200 dollar per month plan then incurred the overage. This was over the span of 1 month or so.