At 40 requests/user/day (totaling 6,000,000 queries/mo), running AI coding assistant on Claude 3.5 Sonnet costs $279,360.00 / month ($55.872 / user / mo).
Total expected API invoice for 5,000 Active Users generating 6,000,000 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 (5,000 Active Users) | Cost / User / Mo | Annual Spend | Context Limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude 3.5 Sonnet (Current) | anthropic | $279,360.00 | $55.872 | $3,352,320.00 | 200,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | openai | $525,600.00 | $105.12 | $6,307,200.00 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Cyber | openai | $1,314,000.00 | $262.80 | $15,768,000.00 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.5 Standard | openai | $525,600.00 | $105.12 | $6,307,200.00 | 512,000 |
| GPT-5.5 Pro | openai | $3,153,600.00 | $630.72 | $37,843,200.00 | 512,000 |
| o3-pro (Frontier Reasoning) | openai | $1,622,400.00 | $324.48 | $19,468,800.00 | 1,000,000 |
At 40 queries per user/day with Claude 3.5 Sonnet, the estimated cost is $55.872 per monthly active user (MAU). Total monthly bill for 5,000 Active Users is $279,360.00.
Assuming a 60% cache hit rate on repeated system and context tokens, prompt caching saves $116,640.00 per month ($1,399,680.00/year) on Claude 3.5 Sonnet.
With a direct COGS of $55.872 per user/month on Claude 3.5 Sonnet, charging at least $279.36 per user/month ensures an 80%+ software gross margin.