Calculate Your AI Cost
Per User, Per Month
Know your AI unit economics before you scale. Compare 40+ models across OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek, and more.
OpenAI · $1.25/1M input · $10/1M output
~600 words
~300 words
$0.0050
$0.250
1.3% of $20 revenue
$250.00
1,000 users × 50 req/mo
98.8%
Healthy margin for an AI-powered SaaS.
Free tier · One-line SDK · No credit card
Cheaper Alternatives to GPT-5
Same token configuration, lower cost. Savings are per user per month.
Full Model Comparison
Cost per request with 800 input and 400 output tokens.
| Model | Provider | Input / 1M | Output / 1M | Cost / Request | Cost / User / Mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Llama 3.2 3B | Meta | $0.06 | $0.06 | $0.000072 | $0.0036 |
| Gemini 2.0 Flash Lite | $0.07 | $0.30 | $0.000180 | $0.0090 | |
| GPT-5 Nano | OpenAI | $0.05 | $0.40 | $0.000200 | $0.010 |
| Mistral Small 3.2 | Mistral | $0.10 | $0.30 | $0.000200 | $0.010 |
| GPT-4.1 Nano | OpenAI | $0.10 | $0.40 | $0.000240 | $0.012 |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite | $0.10 | $0.40 | $0.000240 | $0.012 | |
| Gemini 2.0 Flash | $0.10 | $0.40 | $0.000240 | $0.012 | |
| GPT-4o Mini | OpenAI | $0.15 | $0.60 | $0.000360 | $0.018 |
| Grok 4.1 Fast | xAI | $0.20 | $0.50 | $0.000360 | $0.018 |
| DeepSeek Chat | DeepSeek | $0.28 | $0.42 | $0.000392 | $0.020 |
| Grok 2 Mini | xAI | $0.20 | $1.00 | $0.000560 | $0.028 |
| DeepSeek V3 | DeepSeek | $0.27 | $1.10 | $0.000656 | $0.033 |
| Claude 3 Haiku | Anthropic | $0.25 | $1.25 | $0.000700 | $0.035 |
| GPT-4.1 Mini | OpenAI | $0.40 | $1.60 | $0.000960 | $0.048 |
| GPT-5 Mini | OpenAI | $0.25 | $2.00 | $0.0010 | $0.050 |
| Mistral Large 3 | Mistral | $0.50 | $1.50 | $0.0010 | $0.050 |
| Llama 3.3 70B | Meta | $0.88 | $0.88 | $0.0011 | $0.053 |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash | $0.30 | $2.50 | $0.0012 | $0.062 | |
| Gemini 3 Flash | $0.50 | $3.00 | $0.0016 | $0.080 | |
| o3 Mini | OpenAI | $1.10 | $4.40 | $0.0026 | $0.132 |
| o4 Mini | OpenAI | $1.10 | $4.40 | $0.0026 | $0.132 |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | Anthropic | $1.00 | $5.00 | $0.0028 | $0.140 |
| Claude 3.5 Haiku | Anthropic | $1.00 | $5.00 | $0.0028 | $0.140 |
| GPT-4.1 | OpenAI | $2.00 | $8.00 | $0.0048 | $0.240 |
| o3 | OpenAI | $2.00 | $8.00 | $0.0048 | $0.240 |
| GPT-5.1 | OpenAI | $1.25 | $10.00 | $0.0050 | $0.250 |
| GPT-5 | OpenAI | $1.25 | $10.00 | $0.0050 | $0.250 |
| Gemini 2.5 Pro | $1.25 | $10.00 | $0.0050 | $0.250 | |
| Grok 2 | xAI | $2.00 | $10.00 | $0.0056 | $0.280 |
| GPT-4o | OpenAI | $2.50 | $10.00 | $0.0060 | $0.300 |
| Gemini 3 Pro | $2.00 | $12.00 | $0.0064 | $0.320 | |
| GPT-5.2 | OpenAI | $1.75 | $14.00 | $0.0070 | $0.350 |
| Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Anthropic | $3.00 | $15.00 | $0.0084 | $0.420 |
| Claude Sonnet 4 | Anthropic | $3.00 | $15.00 | $0.0084 | $0.420 |
| Grok 4 | xAI | $3.00 | $15.00 | $0.0084 | $0.420 |
| Claude Opus 4.5 | Anthropic | $5.00 | $25.00 | $0.014 | $0.700 |
| Claude Opus 4.1 | Anthropic | $15.00 | $75.00 | $0.042 | $2.10 |
| o3 Pro | OpenAI | $20.00 | $80.00 | $0.048 | $2.40 |
| GPT-5.2 Pro | OpenAI | $21.00 | $168.00 | $0.084 | $4.20 |
Prices per 1M tokens from official provider pricing pages. Click a row to select that model.
Questions
How accurate are these calculations?
Prices are from official provider pricing pages as of January 2026. Actual costs may vary with volume discounts, batch API pricing, or cached tokens. This gives you a reliable baseline estimate.
What are input vs output tokens?
Input tokens are what you send to the model (prompts, context, system messages). Output tokens are what the model generates back. As a rough guide, 1 token is about 0.75 words in English.
Why does cost per user matter?
If you charge $20/month per user but your AI costs $8/month per user, your AI gross margin is only 60%. Understanding cost per user helps you price correctly and stay profitable as you scale.
How do I track real costs in production?
This calculator gives estimates. For real-time, per-feature cost tracking from actual API calls, integrate Orbit's SDK. It takes one line of code and tracks every request automatically.
Estimates are good.
Real data is better.
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