At 15 requests/user/day (totaling 45,000 queries/mo), running Translation on Perplexity Sonar costs $472.50 / month ($4.725 / user / mo).
Total expected API invoice for 100 Active Users generating 45,000 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 (100 Active Users) | Cost / User / Mo | Annual Spend | Context Limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perplexity Sonar (Current) | perplexity | $472.50 | $4.725 | $5,670.00 | 128,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | openai | $335.925 | $3.359 | $4,031.10 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | openai | $1,259.719 | $12.597 | $15,116.625 | 256,000 |
| GPT-5.4 nano | openai | $348.30 | $3.483 | $4,179.60 | 128,000 |
| GPT-4o mini | openai | $179.719 | $1.797 | $2,156.625 | 128,000 |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | anthropic | $1,432.125 | $14.321 | $17,185.50 | 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 100 Active Users is $472.50.
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.