At 200 requests/user/day (totaling 30,000,000 queries/mo), running Data extraction & tagging on DeepSeek R1 (Reasoner) costs $44,505.00 / month ($8.901 / user / mo).
Total expected API invoice for 5,000 Active Users generating 30,000,000 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 (5,000 Active Users) | Cost / User / Mo | Annual Spend | Context Limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek R1 (Reasoner) (Current) | deepseek | $44,505.00 | $8.901 | $534,060.00 | 64,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Terra | openai | $188,400.00 | $37.68 | $2,260,800.00 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.4 Workhorse | openai | $235,500.00 | $47.10 | $2,826,000.00 | 256,000 |
| o3-mini | openai | $92,400.00 | $18.48 | $1,108,800.00 | 200,000 |
| o4-mini | openai | $89,100.00 | $17.82 | $1,069,200.00 | 256,000 |
| o1-mini | openai | $92,400.00 | $18.48 | $1,108,800.00 | 128,000 |
At 200 queries per user/day with DeepSeek R1 (Reasoner), the estimated cost is $8.901 per monthly active user (MAU). Total monthly bill for 5,000 Active Users is $44,505.00.
Assuming a 20% cache hit rate on repeated system and context tokens, prompt caching saves $4,920.00 per month ($59,040.00/year) on DeepSeek R1 (Reasoner).
With a direct COGS of $8.901 per user/month on DeepSeek R1 (Reasoner), charging at least $44.505 per user/month ensures an 80%+ software gross margin.