AI API Pricing Calculator

APIs charge per token — roughly 4 characters or 0.75 words. Your prompt (input) and the model's response (output) are billed at separate rates. Output is almost always more expensive. Enter your expected token counts and calls per day above to see exactly what you'd pay.

DeepSeek V4 Flash ($0.14/$0.28 per 1M tokens) and Mistral Small-4 ($0.15/$0.60) are the most affordable. For production workloads where quality matters, GPT-5.4 nano and Gemini Flash are strong budget picks. Use the calculator above to compare your actual use case — rankings shift depending on your input/output ratio.

Approximately 1,333 tokens. The rule of thumb: 1 token ≈ 0.75 words. A typical system prompt is 200–500 tokens. A full document page is ~600–800 tokens. Paste your text into the token counter on the right for a precise estimate.

Generating tokens requires significantly more compute than reading them. The model processes your input in parallel, but generates output one token at a time. This is why output pricing is typically 3–10× higher. Tighter, more structured prompts that reduce output length are the fastest way to cut API costs.

Yes — the Batch API gives 50% off on most OpenAI models for requests that can tolerate up to 24-hour turnaround. Ideal for data processing, content generation, or any non-real-time task. For very high volumes, custom enterprise pricing is available directly from OpenAI.

It depends on your use case. OpenAI GPT-5.4 and Anthropic Claude Sonnet are the most reliable general-purpose choices with strong tool-use and instruction-following. DeepSeek and Mistral are dramatically cheaper and worth testing for structured or lower-stakes tasks. Use this calculator to find out exactly how much you'd save — then run a quality test on your actual prompts before committing.