How Much Does AI API Access Really Cost? Free Calculator Inside

#ai #startup #productivity #beginners

You're building with AI. GPT-4o, Claude Sonnet, Gemini. The API works great in testing. Then the bill arrives.

Most developers have no idea what their AI costs will be at scale. You test with 10 requests and think "this is cheap." Then you do the math for 1,000 users making 5 requests each per day and suddenly you're looking at $500/month.

I built a free calculator that shows you exactly what your AI API costs will be before you commit to a provider.

What It Does

Pick your model (GPT-4o, Claude Sonnet, Gemini Flash, etc.), enter your expected usage, and see:

Cost per request
Daily cost
Monthly cost
Yearly cost

Plus a comparison table showing the same usage across every major provider. So you can see if switching from GPT-4o to Claude Haiku saves you 80% or 8%.

The Numbers That Surprise People

GPT-4o costs $2.50 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens. Sounds cheap until you realize a typical API call uses 500-2000 tokens.

At 1,000 requests per day with GPT-4o, you're looking at roughly $300-400/month. Switch to GPT-4o-mini and that drops to under $20.

The model choice matters more than most developers think.