At 6 requests/user/day (totaling 90,000 queries/mo), running Customer support chatbot on DeepSeek R1 (Reasoner) costs $151.83 / month ($0.3037 / user / mo).
Total expected API invoice for 500 Active Users generating 90,000 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 (500 Active Users) | Cost / User / Mo | Annual Spend | Context Limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek R1 (Reasoner) (Current) | deepseek | $151.83 | $0.3037 | $1,821.96 | 64,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Terra | openai | $611.10 | $1.222 | $7,333.20 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.4 Workhorse | openai | $763.875 | $1.528 | $9,166.50 | 256,000 |
| o3-mini | openai | $363.825 | $0.7277 | $4,365.90 | 200,000 |
| o4-mini | openai | $303.188 | $0.6064 | $3,638.25 | 256,000 |
| o1-mini | openai | $363.825 | $0.7277 | $4,365.90 | 128,000 |
At 6 queries per user/day with DeepSeek R1 (Reasoner), the estimated cost is $0.3037 per monthly active user (MAU). Total monthly bill for 500 Active Users is $151.83.
Assuming a 70% cache hit rate on repeated system and context tokens, prompt caching saves $90.405 per month ($1,084.86/year) on DeepSeek R1 (Reasoner).
With a direct COGS of $0.3037 per user/month on DeepSeek R1 (Reasoner), charging at least $1.518 per user/month ensures an 80%+ software gross margin.