Free tool · Prices last checked
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
gpt-6-luna
OpenAI · Budget
cheapest$2.56/mo
Input $0.10 · Output $0.50 /M tokens
Short-context rate
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
DeepSeek · Budget
$6.72/mo
Input $0.30 · Output $1.20 /M tokens
Peak-hour rate; off-peak is 50% less
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite
Google · Budget
$7.20/mo
Input $0.25 · Output $1.50 /M tokens
Text/image/video input; shutdown scheduled May 7, 2027
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite
Google · Budget
$11/mo
Input $0.30 · Output $2.50 /M tokens
Gemini 3.8 Flash
Google · Mid tier
$19/mo
Input $0.75 · Output $3.75 /M tokens
Rate through Dec 31, 2026; $1.50 / $7.50 from Jan 1, 2027
gpt-5.4-mini
OpenAI · Budget
$22/mo
Input $0.75 · Output $4.50 /M tokens
Previous generation
DeepSeek V4 Pro
DeepSeek · Mid tier
$25/mo
Input $1.32 · Output $3.96 /M tokens
Peak-hour rate; off-peak is 50% less
Claude Haiku 4.5
Anthropic · Budget
$26/mo
Input $1.00 · Output $5.00 /M tokens
gpt-6.1-sol
OpenAI · Mid tier
$51/mo
Input $2.00 · Output $10.00 /M tokens
Short-context rate
Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview
Google · Flagship
$58/mo
Input $2.00 · Output $12.00 /M tokens
Prompts up to 200K tokens
Claude Sonnet 5.5
Anthropic · Mid tier
$67/mo
Input $2.00 · Output $10.00 /M tokens
gpt-5.6-sol
OpenAI · Mid tier
$102/mo
Input $4.00 · Output $20.00 /M tokens
Promotional short-context rate at least through Nov 21, 2026
Claude Opus 5.5
Anthropic · Mid tier
$133/mo
Input $4.00 · Output $20.00 /M tokens
gpt-5.5
OpenAI · Mid tier
$144/mo
Input $5.00 · Output $30.00 /M tokens
Previous generation, under 272K context
gpt-6-astra
OpenAI · Flagship
$256/mo
Input $10.00 · Output $50.00 /M tokens
Short-context rate
Claude Fable 5.1
Anthropic · Flagship
$333/mo
Input $10.00 · Output $50.00 /M tokens
Official standard-tier list prices in USD per 1M tokens, each read from the provider's own pricing page on the date shown: OpenAI 2026-09-30, Anthropic 2026-09-30, Google 2026-09-30, DeepSeek 2026-09-30. Claude Fable 5.1, Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5.5 use a newer tokenizer that produces roughly 30% more tokens for the same text (per Anthropic's pricing page); the estimate accounts for it.
Token prices are only one line of the bill. Want to know what a specific workflow would cost to run in production? Take the Workflow Fit Check.
Sources and method
Sources
Every price on this page was read from the provider's own official pricing page, standard tier, on 2026-09-30. 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.
- OpenAI: https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/pricing · checked
- Anthropic: https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing · checked
- Google: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing · checked
- DeepSeek: https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing · checked
Assumptions & exclusions
- List prices in USD per 1M tokens, standard paid tier of each provider's first-party API. Taxes (VAT/sales tax) are excluded.
- Excludes batch, flex, committed-volume and promotional discounts, and surcharges for fast/priority modes, data residency or regional endpoints.
- Excludes prompt caching (reads or writes), fine-tuning, embeddings, audio, image and video.
- Excludes tool fees: web search, grounding, code execution, file storage and other tool calls.
- Uses the short-context rate where the provider distinguishes (OpenAI, Gemini Pro up to 200K). DeepSeek is priced at its peak-hour rate; off-peak is half.
- Reasoning ("thinking") tokens are billed as output and are not estimated here: on reasoning models real output cost can be higher.
- Tokens are estimated from words (~1.33 per English word, ~1.6 per Spanish word, +30% for the Claude models on the newer tokenizer). This is an approximation: actual counts depend on the text and the model.
- Rate limits, quotas and regional availability are not modeled. Prices change: confirm with the provider before budgeting.
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. 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, the AI agent cost breakdown, and how to budget the year-one project.
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 (gpt-6-luna, Gemini Flash-Lite, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash) to a few hundred on flagships. The calculator above computes it with official list 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 the official APIs on this page, gpt-6-luna ($0.10 in / $0.50 out per million tokens) and Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite ($0.25 / $1.50) are the cheapest published standard tiers as of September 30, 2026; DeepSeek V4.1 Flash is $0.30 / $1.20 at peak hours and half that off-peak. Cheapest is not always best: accuracy on your real cases decides the true cost.
Cost & ROI hub
The business case, by question
Pillar page
AI implementation cost (pillar)
Market ranges, cost drivers, and the ROI calculator for a production agent in LatAm.
ROI of AI automation
How to build the internal business case: baseline, payback, and when not to automate.
Operational cost reduction with AI
Where operating cost actually sits, and which workflows move it.
What an AI agent costs
Build, operate, and the line items most quotes leave out.
Budgeting an enterprise AI project
A year-one budget: audit, build, operation, and change management.
Chatbot vs agent TCO
SaaS chatbot versus a custom agent, measured per resolved conversation.
Next step
Turn the number into a decision
The ranges on this page are the market. A 10-day validation on one of your workflows turns them into a fixed-scope quote — or tells you to wait.
Analysis
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