At 4 requests/user/day (totaling 12,000,000 queries/mo), running Document summarization on Perplexity Sonar Deep Research costs $657,600.00 / month ($6.576 / user / mo).
Total expected API invoice for 100,000 Active Users generating 12,000,000 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 (100,000 Active Users) | Cost / User / Mo | Annual Spend | Context Limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perplexity Sonar Deep Research (Current) | perplexity | $657,600.00 | $6.576 | $7,891,200.00 | 128,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | openai | $1,581,000.00 | $15.81 | $18,972,000.00 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Cyber | openai | $3,952,500.00 | $39.525 | $47,430,000.00 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.5 Standard | openai | $1,581,000.00 | $15.81 | $18,972,000.00 | 512,000 |
| GPT-5.5 Pro | openai | $9,486,000.00 | $94.86 | $113,832,000.00 | 512,000 |
| o3-pro (Frontier Reasoning) | openai | $6,036,000.00 | $60.36 | $72,432,000.00 | 1,000,000 |
At 4 queries per user/day with Perplexity Sonar Deep Research, the estimated cost is $6.576 per monthly active user (MAU). Total monthly bill for 100,000 Active Users is $657,600.00.
Assuming a 10% 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 $6.576 per user/month on Perplexity Sonar Deep Research, charging at least $32.88 per user/month ensures an 80%+ software gross margin.