At 15 requests/user/day (totaling 4,500 queries/mo), running Translation on Perplexity Sonar costs $47.25 / month ($4.725 / user / mo).
Total expected API invoice for 10 Active Users generating 4,500 queries.
Direct inference cost per MAU to model your SaaS pricing tiers and gross margins.
Savings generated by exploiting 15% cache hits on prompt context.
| Model | Provider | Monthly Spend (10 Active Users) | Cost / User / Mo | Annual Spend | Context Limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perplexity Sonar (Current) | perplexity | $47.25 | $4.725 | $567.00 | 128,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | openai | $33.592 | $3.359 | $403.11 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | openai | $125.972 | $12.597 | $1,511.663 | 256,000 |
| GPT-5.4 nano | openai | $34.83 | $3.483 | $417.96 | 128,000 |
| GPT-4o mini | openai | $17.972 | $1.797 | $215.663 | 128,000 |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | anthropic | $143.213 | $14.321 | $1,718.55 | 1,000,000 |
At 15 queries per user/day with Perplexity Sonar, the estimated cost is $4.725 per monthly active user (MAU). Total monthly bill for 10 Active Users is $47.25.
Assuming a 15% cache hit rate on repeated system and context tokens, prompt caching saves $0.00 per month ($0.00/year) on Perplexity Sonar.
With a direct COGS of $4.725 per user/month on Perplexity Sonar, charging at least $23.625 per user/month ensures an 80%+ software gross margin.