At 15 requests/user/day (totaling 2,250,000 queries/mo), running Translation on Perplexity Sonar Pro costs $219,375.00 / month ($43.875 / user / mo).
Total expected API invoice for 5,000 Active Users generating 2,250,000 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 (5,000 Active Users) | Cost / User / Mo | Annual Spend | Context Limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perplexity Sonar Pro (Current) | perplexity | $219,375.00 | $43.875 | $2,632,500.00 | 200,000 |
| GPT-5.6 Terra | openai | $167,962.50 | $33.593 | $2,015,550.00 | 1,050,000 |
| GPT-5.4 Workhorse | openai | $209,953.125 | $41.991 | $2,519,437.50 | 256,000 |
| o3-mini | openai | $65,896.875 | $13.179 | $790,762.50 | 200,000 |
| o4-mini | openai | $65,432.813 | $13.087 | $785,193.75 | 256,000 |
| o1-mini | openai | $65,896.875 | $13.179 | $790,762.50 | 128,000 |
At 15 queries per user/day with Perplexity Sonar Pro, the estimated cost is $43.875 per monthly active user (MAU). Total monthly bill for 5,000 Active Users is $219,375.00.
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 Pro.
With a direct COGS of $43.875 per user/month on Perplexity Sonar Pro, charging at least $219.375 per user/month ensures an 80%+ software gross margin.