LLM API Cost Simulator: GPT-4o, Claude 3.5 & Gemini 1.5 Guide
Compare Monthly Token Costs for RAG, Customer Support & Agent Workloads
LLM API costs vary enormously across providers and models. GPT-4o charges $5/million input tokens and $15/million output tokens, while Claude 3.5 Sonnet is priced at $3/$15 per million. For a high-volume production deployment processing 50 million tokens monthly, the choice of model can mean a difference of $100,000+ per year in API costs.
Our simulator lets you input monthly input and output token volumes, select any combination of models, and see exact cost projections for 1 month, 6 months, and 1 year. It also calculates the break-even point between using a managed API and self-hosting open-source models like LLaMA 3 on cloud GPU instances.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it cheaper to use GPT-4o API or self-host an open-source model?
At low to medium volumes, GPT-4o API is cheaper when accounting for GPU rental, engineering, and maintenance. At very high volumes (100M+ tokens/month), self-hosting LLaMA 3 70B becomes cost-competitive.