At 200 requests/user/day (totaling 30,000,000 queries/mo), running Data extraction & tagging on Perplexity Sonar Deep Research costs $180,000.00 / month ($36.00 / 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perplexity Sonar Deep Research (Current) | perplexity | $180,000.00 | $36.00 | $2,160,000.00 | 128,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | openai | $471,000.00 | $94.20 | $5,652,000.00 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Cyber | openai | $1,177,500.00 | $235.50 | $14,130,000.00 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.5 Standard | openai | $471,000.00 | $94.20 | $5,652,000.00 | 512,000 |
| GPT-5.5 Pro | openai | $2,826,000.00 | $565.20 | $33,912,000.00 | 512,000 |
| o3-pro (Frontier Reasoning) | openai | $1,584,000.00 | $316.80 | $19,008,000.00 | 1,000,000 |
At 200 queries per user/day with Perplexity Sonar Deep Research, the estimated cost is $36.00 per monthly active user (MAU). Total monthly bill for 5,000 Active Users is $180,000.00.
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 Deep Research.
With a direct COGS of $36.00 per user/month on Perplexity Sonar Deep Research, charging at least $180.00 per user/month ensures an 80%+ software gross margin.