At 40 requests/user/day (totaling 12,000 queries/mo), running AI coding assistant on Perplexity Sonar Deep Research costs $480.00 / month ($48.00 / user / mo).
Total expected API invoice for 10 Active Users generating 12,000 queries.
Direct inference cost per MAU to model your SaaS pricing tiers and gross margins.
Savings generated by exploiting 60% cache hits on prompt context.
| Model | Provider | Monthly Spend (10 Active Users) | Cost / User / Mo | Annual Spend | Context Limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perplexity Sonar Deep Research (Current) | perplexity | $480.00 | $48.00 | $5,760.00 | 128,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | openai | $1,051.20 | $105.12 | $12,614.40 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Cyber | openai | $2,628.00 | $262.80 | $31,536.00 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.5 Standard | openai | $1,051.20 | $105.12 | $12,614.40 | 512,000 |
| GPT-5.5 Pro | openai | $6,307.20 | $630.72 | $75,686.40 | 512,000 |
| o3-pro (Frontier Reasoning) | openai | $3,244.80 | $324.48 | $38,937.60 | 1,000,000 |
At 40 queries per user/day with Perplexity Sonar Deep Research, the estimated cost is $48.00 per monthly active user (MAU). Total monthly bill for 10 Active Users is $480.00.
Assuming a 60% cache hit rate on repeated system and context tokens, prompt caching saves $0.00 per month ($0.00/year) on Perplexity Sonar Deep Research.
With a direct COGS of $48.00 per user/month on Perplexity Sonar Deep Research, charging at least $240.00 per user/month ensures an 80%+ software gross margin.