At 6 requests/user/day (totaling 90,000 queries/mo), running Customer support chatbot on DeepSeek V4 Flash costs $86.247 / month ($0.1725 / user / mo).
Customer support chatbot for a 500 active users (early growth) audience means 3,000 requests per day on average, each carrying 3,500 input and 350 output tokens at a 70% cacheable share — so the effective per-request cost on DeepSeek V4 Flash is $0.000958, of which $93.933/mo comes back from prompt caching. Per active user that's $0.1725/mo — the number to hold against your pricing tier and gross margin. Charging at least $0.8625/user/mo keeps gross margin at or above 80%.
Quick answer
For 500 Active Users, Customer support chatbot on DeepSeek V4 Flash is modeled at 90,000 requests per month, costing $86.247 per month or $0.1725 per active user.
Method & trust
This projection combines the selected active-user tier, requests per user per day, input/output tokens per request, and the modeled cache share. It is an operating estimate, not a provider invoice; production traffic and retries should be measured against it.
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 V4 Flash (Current) | deepseek | $86.247 | $0.1725 | $1,034.964 | 1,000,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | openai | $61.11 | $0.1222 | $733.32 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | openai | $229.163 | $0.4583 | $2,749.95 | 256,000 |
| GPT-5.4 nano | openai | $62.685 | $0.1254 | $752.22 | 128,000 |
| GPT-4o mini | openai | $49.613 | $0.0992 | $595.35 | 128,000 |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | anthropic | $274.05 | $0.5481 | $3,288.60 | 1,000,000 |
At 6 queries per user/day with DeepSeek V4 Flash, the estimated cost is $0.1725 per monthly active user (MAU). Total monthly bill for 500 Active Users is $86.247.
Assuming a 70% cache hit rate on repeated system and context tokens, prompt caching saves $93.933 per month ($1,127.196/year) on DeepSeek V4 Flash.
With a direct COGS of $0.1725 per user/month on DeepSeek V4 Flash, charging at least $0.8625 per user/month ensures an 80%+ software gross margin.