At 4 requests/user/day (totaling 12,000 queries/mo), running Document summarization on DeepSeek R1 (Reasoner) costs $168.468 / month ($1.685 / user / mo).
Total expected API invoice for 100 Active Users generating 12,000 queries.
Direct inference cost per MAU to model your SaaS pricing tiers and gross margins.
Savings generated by exploiting 10% cache hits on prompt context.
| Model | Provider | Monthly Spend (100 Active Users) | Cost / User / Mo | Annual Spend | Context Limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek R1 (Reasoner) (Current) | deepseek | $168.468 | $1.685 | $2,021.616 | 64,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Terra | openai | $632.40 | $6.324 | $7,588.80 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.4 Workhorse | openai | $790.50 | $7.905 | $9,486.00 | 256,000 |
| o3-mini | openai | $345.18 | $3.452 | $4,142.16 | 200,000 |
| o4-mini | openai | $336.93 | $3.369 | $4,043.16 | 256,000 |
| o1-mini | openai | $345.18 | $3.452 | $4,142.16 | 128,000 |
At 4 queries per user/day with DeepSeek R1 (Reasoner), the estimated cost is $1.685 per monthly active user (MAU). Total monthly bill for 100 Active Users is $168.468.
Assuming a 10% cache hit rate on repeated system and context tokens, prompt caching saves $12.30 per month ($147.60/year) on DeepSeek R1 (Reasoner).
With a direct COGS of $1.685 per user/month on DeepSeek R1 (Reasoner), charging at least $8.423 per user/month ensures an 80%+ software gross margin.