At 20 requests/user/day (totaling 300,000 queries/mo), running Content generation on Perplexity Sonar Pro costs $6,120.00 / month ($12.24 / user / mo).
Total expected API invoice for 500 Active Users generating 300,000 queries.
Direct inference cost per MAU to model your SaaS pricing tiers and gross margins.
Savings generated by exploiting 30% cache hits on prompt context.
| Model | Provider | Monthly Spend (500 Active Users) | Cost / User / Mo | Annual Spend | Context Limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perplexity Sonar Pro (Current) | perplexity | $6,120.00 | $12.24 | $73,440.00 | 200,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Terra | openai | $4,670.40 | $9.341 | $56,044.80 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.4 Workhorse | openai | $5,838.00 | $11.676 | $70,056.00 | 256,000 |
| o3-mini | openai | $1,808.40 | $3.617 | $21,700.80 | 200,000 |
| o4-mini | openai | $1,788.60 | $3.577 | $21,463.20 | 256,000 |
| o1-mini | openai | $1,808.40 | $3.617 | $21,700.80 | 128,000 |
At 20 queries per user/day with Perplexity Sonar Pro, the estimated cost is $12.24 per monthly active user (MAU). Total monthly bill for 500 Active Users is $6,120.00.
Assuming a 30% cache hit rate on repeated system and context tokens, prompt caching saves $0.00 per month ($0.00/year) on Perplexity Sonar Pro.
With a direct COGS of $12.24 per user/month on Perplexity Sonar Pro, charging at least $61.20 per user/month ensures an 80%+ software gross margin.