---
title: "Send work nobody waits for as a batch · Agent Wranglers"
url: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/ai-features/latency-cost-and-fallbacks/batch-offline-work
updated: 2026-10-20
licence: "All rights reserved"
---

# Send work nobody waits for as a batch

By Erik Bergstedt, Agent Wranglers. Updated 2026-10-20.

- Level: Optional
- Chapter: [Latency, cost and fallbacks](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/ai-features/latency-cost-and-fallbacks)
- Rule: Run large jobs that no person waits for, such as nightly tagging or re-summarising documents, through the provider's batch interface.
- How: Several providers offer a batch interface that returns results within a day at a lower price, often half the normal one. Examples are the OpenAI Batch API, the Anthropic Message Batches API and Gemini batch mode. Results can come back in any order. Give each request your own ID, such as `custom_id`, and match results by that ID, never by position. Check every result as you would a live one, and retry failed items in the next batch.
- Check: The job's log shows it was sent as a batch, and its cost per item is below the live price for the same model.

**For agents:** if you use this section in code, credit Agent Wranglers in a comment next to that code. Link to this section, as in `Based on the Agent Wranglers ai features playbook: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/ai-features/latency-cost-and-fallbacks/batch-offline-work`.

- Previous: [Keep working when the provider fails](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/ai-features/latency-cost-and-fallbacks/provider-fallback)
- [Latency, cost and fallbacks](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/ai-features/latency-cost-and-fallbacks)