At 10 requests/user/day (totaling 300,000 queries/mo), running RAG / search-augmented answers on Qwen 3 32B Instruct costs $648.00 / month ($0.648 / user / mo).
RAG / search-augmented answers for a 1,000 active users (seed stage saas) audience means 10,000 requests per day on average, each carrying 8,000 input and 500 output tokens at a 50% cacheable share — so the effective per-request cost on Qwen 3 32B Instruct is $0.00216, of which $432.00/mo comes back from prompt caching. Per active user that's $0.648/mo — the number to hold against your pricing tier and gross margin. Charging at least $3.24/user/mo keeps gross margin at or above 80%.
Quick answer
For 1,000 Active Users, RAG / search-augmented answers on Qwen 3 32B Instruct is modeled at 300,000 requests per month, costing $648.00 per month or $0.648 per active user.
Method & trust
This projection combines the selected active-user tier, requests per user per day, input/output tokens per request, and the modeled cache share. It is an operating estimate, not a provider invoice; production traffic and retries should be measured against it.
Total expected API invoice for 1,000 Active Users generating 300,000 queries.
Direct inference cost per MAU to model your SaaS pricing tiers and gross margins.
Savings generated by exploiting 50% cache hits on prompt context.
| Model | Provider | Monthly Spend (1,000 Active Users) | Cost / User / Mo | Annual Spend | Context Limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen 3 32B Instruct (Current) | qwen | $648.00 | $0.648 | $7,776.00 | 128,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Terra | openai | $4,440.00 | $4.44 | $53,280.00 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.4 Workhorse | openai | $5,550.00 | $5.55 | $66,600.00 | 256,000 |
| o3-mini | openai | $2,640.00 | $2.64 | $31,680.00 | 200,000 |
| o4-mini | openai | $2,310.00 | $2.31 | $27,720.00 | 256,000 |
| o1-mini | openai | $2,640.00 | $2.64 | $31,680.00 | 128,000 |
At 10 queries per user/day with Qwen 3 32B Instruct, the estimated cost is $0.648 per monthly active user (MAU). Total monthly bill for 1,000 Active Users is $648.00.
Assuming a 50% cache hit rate on repeated system and context tokens, prompt caching saves $432.00 per month ($5,184.00/year) on Qwen 3 32B Instruct.
With a direct COGS of $0.648 per user/month on Qwen 3 32B Instruct, charging at least $3.24 per user/month ensures an 80%+ software gross margin.