At 6 requests/user/day (totaling 90,000 queries/mo), running Customer support chatbot on Perplexity Sonar Pro costs $1,417.50 / month ($2.835 / 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perplexity Sonar Pro (Current) | perplexity | $1,417.50 | $2.835 | $17,010.00 | 200,000 |
| 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 Perplexity Sonar Pro, the estimated cost is $2.835 per monthly active user (MAU). Total monthly bill for 500 Active Users is $1,417.50.
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.