At 40 requests/user/day (totaling 6,000,000 queries/mo), running AI coding assistant on Perplexity Sonar costs $84,000.00 / month ($16.80 / 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perplexity Sonar (Current) | perplexity | $84,000.00 | $16.80 | $1,008,000.00 | 128,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | openai | $21,024.00 | $4.205 | $252,288.00 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | openai | $78,840.00 | $15.768 | $946,080.00 | 256,000 |
| GPT-5.4 nano | openai | $21,624.00 | $4.325 | $259,488.00 | 128,000 |
| GPT-4o mini | openai | $14,760.00 | $2.952 | $177,120.00 | 128,000 |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | anthropic | $93,120.00 | $18.624 | $1,117,440.00 | 1,000,000 |
At 40 queries per user/day with Perplexity Sonar, the estimated cost is $16.80 per monthly active user (MAU). Total monthly bill for 5,000 Active Users is $84,000.00.
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.
With a direct COGS of $16.80 per user/month on Perplexity Sonar, charging at least $84.00 per user/month ensures an 80%+ software gross margin.