Workload Units for your app is shared across Dev and Live, so your 175K is available to be used between the two, meaning you can use 100K in Dev and 85K in Live and go over your allotment by 10K.
For an unoptimized app yes, I can imagine 80K being consumed.
It is a set of instructions for the computer to know what to do based on a user action like click of a button. It requires power, like electricity, but it is Server Power that it requires or Device Power that it requires. If it is Device Power (from phone or computer of user) it doesn’t cost any workload units to run the actions. If it is Server Power it requires it costs workload units. Most actions dealing with data require the Server Power.
I can tell you without looking at it that it is not good enough if it is not optimized.
Yes, sticker shock for paying app owners can be challenging to deal with.
I have ways to optimize for workload units beyond the legacy approach to optimizing and I use a Hybrid data structuring approach using my plugin Data Jedi that allows me to reduce the costs of data retrieval by 95%. I’ve made it such so that one search consuming 250,000 WU a month only requires 25,000 WU a month, with the same functionality as the legacy approach, but also with faster page load speeds as well. For a system with 2000 standards to compare records against, my hybrid data structuring approach is a great way to reduce the WU costs.