Salesforce Cost Tuning Skill

Salesforce Cost Tuning

Overview

Optimize Salesforce costs by reducing API call consumption, choosing the right edition, and monitoring API usage budgets. Salesforce charges per-user licenses (not per-API-call), but API limits are tied to edition + license count.

Prerequisites

Access to Salesforce Setup > Company Information
Understanding of current API usage patterns
Access to contract/license details

Instructions

Step 1: Understand Salesforce Pricing Model

| Edition | Per-User/Month | API Calls/Day (Base) | Per-User API Calls | |---------|---------------|---------------------|-------------------| | Developer | Free | 15,000 | N/A (1 user) | | Essentials | ~$25 | 15,000 | +1,000/user | | Professional | ~$80 | 15,000 | +1,000/user | | Enterprise | ~$165 | 100,000 | +1,000/user | | Unlimited | ~$330 | 100,000 | +5,000/user | | API Add-on Pack | Varies | +200K-10M/day | Per org |

Key insight: API calls are per-org, not per-user. A 50-user Enterprise org gets 100,000 + (50 * 1,000) = 150,000 daily API calls. All integrations share this pool.

Step 2: Monitor Current Usage

const conn = await getConnection();
const limits = await conn.request('/services/data/v59.0/limits/');

const apiUsage = {
  daily: {
    used: limits.DailyApiRequests.Max - limits.DailyApiRequests.Remaining,
    remaining: limits.DailyApiRequests.Remaining,
    max: limits.DailyApiRequests.Max,
    percentUsed: ((limits.DailyApiRequests.Max - limits.DailyApiRequests.Remaining) / limits.DailyApiRequests.Max * 100).toFixed(1),
  },
  bulk: {
    ingestJobs: limits.DailyBulkV2QueryJobs,
    queryJobs: limits.DailyBulkV2QueryJobs,
  },
  storage: {
    dataMB: `${limits.DataStorageMB.Max - limits.DataStorageMB.Remaining}/${limits.DataStorageMB.Max} MB`,
    fileMB: `${limits.FileStorageMB.Max - limits.FileStorageMB.Remaining}/${limits.FileStorageMB.Max} MB`,
  },
};

console.log('API Usage:', JSON.stringify(apiUsage, null, 2));

Step 3: Reduce API Call Count (Biggest Cost Lever)

// BEFORE: 1 API call per record = expensive
for (const contact of contacts) {
  await conn.sobject('Contact').create(contact); // 1000 calls for 1000 records
}

// AFTER: Batch with sObject Collections = 5 calls for 1000 records
for (let i = 0; i < contacts.length; i += 200) {
  const batch = contacts.slice(i, i + 200);
  await conn.sobject('Contact').create(batch); // Max 200 per call
}

// AFTER: Use Bulk API for 10K+ records = 1 job regardless of count
await conn.bulk2.loadAndWaitForResults({
  object: 'Contact',
  operation: 'insert',
  input: csvData, // Can be millions of rows
});
// Bulk API has its own separate daily limit (15,000 jobs)

// Cache describe calls — saves 50+ calls/day if you describe objects frequently
const describeCache = new Map();
async function cachedDescribe(objectName: string) {
  if (!describeCache.has(objectName)) {
    describeCache.set(objectName, await conn.sobject(objectName).describe());
  }
  return describeCache.get(objectName);
}

Step 4: API Call Budget Tracking

class ApiCallBudget {
  private dailyBudget: number;
  private callsToday = 0;

  constructor(dailyBudget: number) {
    this.dailyBudget = dailyBudget;
  }

  async refreshFromOrg(conn: jsforce.Connection): Promise<void> {
    const limits = await conn.request('/services/data/v59.0/limits/');
    this.callsToday = limits.DailyApiRequests.Max - limits.DailyApiRequests.Remaining;
    // Note: this call itself costs 1 API call — don't check too frequently
  }

  canSpend(estimatedCalls: number): { allowed: boolean; reason?: string } {
    const projected = this.callsToday + estimatedCalls;

    if (projected > this.dailyBudget * 0.95) {
      return { allowed: false, reason: `Would exceed 95% of ${this.dailyBudget} daily budget` };
    }

    if (projected > this.dailyBudget * 0.80) {
      console.warn(`API budget warning: ${this.callsToday}/${this.dailyBudget} used`);
    }

    return { allowed: true };
  }
}

Step 5: Edition Right-Sizing

Decision tree for Salesforce edition:

If API calls/day < 15,000:
  → Developer Edition (free) or Professional ($80/user/month)

If API calls/day 15,000-150,000:
  → Enterprise Edition ($165/user/month)

If API calls/day > 150,000:
  → Unlimited ($330/user/month) or API Add-on Pack
  → OR reduce calls with batching/caching (usually cheaper)

If you need just data sync:
  → Consider Heroku Connect ($$$) for automatic bi-directional sync
  → Eliminates most API calls — data syncs via Change Data Capture

Output

Current API usage analyzed
Cost reduction strategies applied (batching, caching, Bulk API)
API call budget tracking implemented
Edition recommendation based on usage

Error Handling

| Issue | Cause | Solution | |-------|-------|----------| | Unexpected API call spike | Unoptimized loop/query | Use Collections or Bulk API | | Budget exceeded | Missing monitoring | Add budget tracking class | | Storage limit | Too many records/files | Archive old data, delete test data | | License overspend | Unused integration licenses | Audit active users quarterly |

Resources

Next Steps

For architecture patterns, see salesforce-reference-architecture.

Agent Skills: Salesforce Cost Tuning

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