At 200 requests/user/day (totaling 60,000,000 queries/mo), running Data extraction & tagging on Perplexity Sonar Pro costs $585,000.00 / month ($58.50 / user / mo).
Total expected API invoice for 10,000 Active Users generating 60,000,000 queries.
Direct inference cost per MAU to model your SaaS pricing tiers and gross margins.
Savings generated by exploiting 20% cache hits on prompt context.
| Model | Provider | Monthly Spend (10,000 Active Users) | Cost / User / Mo | Annual Spend | Context Limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perplexity Sonar Pro (Current) | perplexity | $585,000.00 | $58.50 | $7,020,000.00 | 200,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Terra | openai | $376,800.00 | $37.68 | $4,521,600.00 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.4 Workhorse | openai | $471,000.00 | $47.10 | $5,652,000.00 | 256,000 |
| o3-mini | openai | $184,800.00 | $18.48 | $2,217,600.00 | 200,000 |
| o4-mini | openai | $178,200.00 | $17.82 | $2,138,400.00 | 256,000 |
| o1-mini | openai | $184,800.00 | $18.48 | $2,217,600.00 | 128,000 |
At 200 queries per user/day with Perplexity Sonar Pro, the estimated cost is $58.50 per monthly active user (MAU). Total monthly bill for 10,000 Active Users is $585,000.00.
Assuming a 20% 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 $58.50 per user/month on Perplexity Sonar Pro, charging at least $292.50 per user/month ensures an 80%+ software gross margin.