At 20 requests/user/day (totaling 3,000,000 queries/mo), running Content generation on Claude Opus 5 costs $98,760.00 / month ($19.752 / user / mo).
Total expected API invoice for 5,000 Active Users generating 3,000,000 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 (5,000 Active Users) | Cost / User / Mo | Annual Spend | Context Limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 5 (Current) | anthropic | $98,760.00 | $19.752 | $1,185,120.00 | 1,000,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | openai | $116,760.00 | $23.352 | $1,401,120.00 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Cyber | openai | $291,900.00 | $58.38 | $3,502,800.00 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.5 Standard | openai | $116,760.00 | $23.352 | $1,401,120.00 | 512,000 |
| GPT-5.5 Pro | openai | $700,560.00 | $140.112 | $8,406,720.00 | 512,000 |
| o3-pro (Frontier Reasoning) | openai | $323,040.00 | $64.608 | $3,876,480.00 | 1,000,000 |
At 20 queries per user/day with Claude Opus 5, the estimated cost is $19.752 per monthly active user (MAU). Total monthly bill for 5,000 Active Users is $98,760.00.
Assuming a 30% cache hit rate on repeated system and context tokens, prompt caching saves $3,240.00 per month ($38,880.00/year) on Claude Opus 5.
With a direct COGS of $19.752 per user/month on Claude Opus 5, charging at least $98.76 per user/month ensures an 80%+ software gross margin.