AI Cost Calculator
Calculating AI costs is complex because of token ratios.
The Golden Formula
$$ \text{Total Cost} = (\text{Users} \times \text{Reqs/User}) \times [(\text{Input Tokens} \times P_{in}) + (\text{Output Tokens} \times P_{out})] $$
Example Scenario: RAG Chatbot
- Users: 1,000 daily active users.
- Requests: 10 messages per user.
- Input: 2,000 tokens (Context from PDF) = $5.00 / 1M tokens.
- Output: 500 tokens (Answer) = $15.00 / 1M tokens.
Daily Cost:
- Requests = 10,000
- Input Cost = 10k * (2000/1M * $5) = $100
- Output Cost = 10k * (500/1M * $15) = $75
- Total = $175 / day ($5,250 / month)
ROI Analysis (Return on Investment)
Is it worth it?
Support Bot Example:
- Cost: $5,250 / month.
- Human Agent: $4,000 / month.
- If the bot replaces 2 human agents, you save $2,750 / month.
Interactive Calculator
Build your own calculator in a spreadsheet:
| Variable | Value |
|---|---|
| Daily Active Users | 1000 |
| Avg Requests / User | 10 |
| Avg Context Length | 2000 |
| Avg Response Length | 500 |
| Projected Cost | $175.00 |
Model Price Comparison (Estimates)
| Model | Input ($/1M) | Output ($/1M) |
|---|---|---|
| GPT-4o | $5.00 | $15.00 |
| GPT-4o-mini | $0.15 | $0.60 |
| Claude 3.5 Sonnet | $3.00 | $15.00 |
| Gemini 1.5 Flash | $0.35 | $1.05 |