Free tool · Prices verified 2026-08-03
What does the AI API really cost per month?
Official prices for OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and DeepSeek, applied to your volume, your document sizes, and your language. No email required.
documents processed, conversations, summaries, extractions
prompt plus the document or conversation the model reads
what the model writes back
| Model | Input $/M | Output $/M | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 2.5 Flash-LiteGoogle · Budgetcheapest | $0.10 | $0.40 | $2.24/mo |
| DeepSeek v4 FlashDeepSeek · Budget | $0.14 | $0.28 | $2.24/mo |
| GPT-5.4 nanoOpenAI · Budget | $0.20 | $1.25 | $5.92/mo |
| DeepSeek v4 ProDeepSeek · Mid tier | $0.435 | $0.87 | $6.96/mo |
| Gemini 3.1 Flash-LiteGoogle · Budget | $0.25 | $1.50 | $7.20/mo |
| GPT-5.4 miniOpenAI · Budget | $0.75 | $4.50 | $22/mo |
| Claude Haiku 4.5Anthropic · Budget | $1.00 | $5.00 | $26/mo |
| Gemini 3.6 FlashGoogle · Mid tier | $1.50 | $7.50 | $38/mo |
| Gemini 3.1 ProGoogle · Flagship Up to 200K context | $2.00 | $12.00 | $58/mo |
| GPT-5.4OpenAI · Mid tier | $2.50 | $15.00 | $72/mo |
| Claude Sonnet 5Anthropic · Mid tier Intro price $2/$10 through Aug 31, 2026 | $3.00 | $15.00 | $100/mo |
| GPT-5.5OpenAI · Flagship | $5.00 | $30.00 | $144/mo |
| Claude Opus 5Anthropic · Mid tier | $5.00 | $25.00 | $166/mo |
| Claude Fable 5Anthropic · Flagship | $10.00 | $50.00 | $333/mo |
Prices are the official standard-tier rates per provider as of 2026-08-03. Claude Fable 5, Opus 5 and Sonnet 5 use a newer tokenizer that produces roughly 30% more tokens for the same text (per Anthropic's pricing page); the estimate accounts for it.
Sources and method
Where these numbers come from
Prices were read from each provider's official pricing page on 2026-08-03: OpenAI (developers.openai.com), Anthropic (platform.claude.com), Google (ai.google.dev) and DeepSeek (api-docs.deepseek.com), standard tier, no batch discounts. NVIDIA Nemotron is excluded because build.nvidia.com publishes no per-token price: its hosted catalog is a free prototyping tier and production runs self-hosted under NVIDIA AI Enterprise.
Word-to-token conversion uses ~1.33 tokens per English word (the 4-characters heuristic both OpenAI and Anthropic publish) and ~1.6 for Spanish, based on tokenization fairness research. Prices change: always confirm with the provider before budgeting. And if what you actually need is the cost of implementing AI end to end, that is a different number: see the full implementation pricing guide.
FAQ
Common questions
How much does the AI (LLM) API cost per month for a company?
It depends on three numbers: tasks per month, words the model reads per task, and words it writes. As a reference, 10,000 monthly tasks reading 600 words and writing 200 in Spanish cost from a few dollars per month on budget models (DeepSeek v4 Flash, Gemini Flash-Lite) to a few hundred on flagships. The calculator above computes it with official prices.
Why does Spanish cost more tokens than English?
Tokenizers were trained mostly on English, so Spanish splits into more pieces: roughly 1.5 to 1.7 tokens per word versus about 1.33 in English (Petrov et al., NeurIPS 2023). The same document in Spanish can cost 15 to 25 percent more.
Is the API the main cost of implementing AI?
Almost never. For a production agent, model tokens are usually a small fraction of the total: the real costs are integration engineering, evaluation, and day-two operation. Our full pricing guide breaks down what an implementation actually costs.
Which AI model is cheapest in 2026?
Among official APIs, DeepSeek v4 Flash ($0.14 in / $0.28 out per million tokens) and Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite ($0.10 / $0.40) are the cheapest published tiers as of August 2026. Cheapest is not always best: accuracy on your real cases decides the true cost.
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