At 4 requests/user/day (totaling 6,000,000 queries/mo), running Document summarization on Perplexity Sonar Pro costs $504,000.00 / month ($10.08 / user / mo).
Total expected API invoice for 50,000 Active Users generating 6,000,000 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 (50,000 Active Users) | Cost / User / Mo | Annual Spend | Context Limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perplexity Sonar Pro (Current) | perplexity | $504,000.00 | $10.08 | $6,048,000.00 | 200,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Terra | openai | $316,200.00 | $6.324 | $3,794,400.00 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.4 Workhorse | openai | $395,250.00 | $7.905 | $4,743,000.00 | 256,000 |
| o3-mini | openai | $172,590.00 | $3.452 | $2,071,080.00 | 200,000 |
| o4-mini | openai | $168,465.00 | $3.369 | $2,021,580.00 | 256,000 |
| o1-mini | openai | $172,590.00 | $3.452 | $2,071,080.00 | 128,000 |
At 4 queries per user/day with Perplexity Sonar Pro, the estimated cost is $10.08 per monthly active user (MAU). Total monthly bill for 50,000 Active Users is $504,000.00.
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 Pro.
With a direct COGS of $10.08 per user/month on Perplexity Sonar Pro, charging at least $50.40 per user/month ensures an 80%+ software gross margin.