True, this is how RAG works, but this is why I prefer to use open-source LLMs for RAG: because the token costs are less opaque and I can control how many chunks I pull fromthe database to manage my costs
Yes of course. The point remains: the LLM has to process the data somehow.
If you are concerned about costs and token usage then switch to a provider that works for your problem (Flash Gemini looks very interesting..)