At 6 requests/user/day (totaling 1,800 queries/mo), running Customer support chatbot on Perplexity Sonar Pro costs $28.35 / month ($2.835 / user / mo).
Total expected API invoice for 10 Active Users generating 1,800 queries.
Direct inference cost per MAU to model your SaaS pricing tiers and gross margins.
Savings generated by exploiting 70% cache hits on prompt context.
| Model | Provider | Monthly Spend (10 Active Users) | Cost / User / Mo | Annual Spend | Context Limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perplexity Sonar Pro (Current) | perplexity | $28.35 | $2.835 | $340.20 | 200,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Terra | openai | $12.222 | $1.222 | $146.664 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.4 Workhorse | openai | $15.278 | $1.528 | $183.33 | 256,000 |
| o3-mini | openai | $7.277 | $0.7277 | $87.318 | 200,000 |
| o4-mini | openai | $6.064 | $0.6064 | $72.765 | 256,000 |
| o1-mini | openai | $7.277 | $0.7277 | $87.318 | 128,000 |
At 6 queries per user/day with Perplexity Sonar Pro, the estimated cost is $2.835 per monthly active user (MAU). Total monthly bill for 10 Active Users is $28.35.
Assuming a 70% 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 $2.835 per user/month on Perplexity Sonar Pro, charging at least $14.175 per user/month ensures an 80%+ software gross margin.