AI Model Pricing Table

Understanding AI Model Pricing

AI models charge based on token usage — the fundamental unit of text processing. A token is roughly 3-4 characters or about 0.75 words. Pricing is typically split between input tokens (your prompt and context) and output tokens (the model's response), with output usually costing more due to the computational expense of generation.

Prices shown in this table are per 1 million tokens. For reference, 1 million tokens is roughly 750,000 words or about 1,500 pages of text — far more than most individual API calls will use.

How AI Pricing Works

Cost Optimization Strategies

Model Selection by Use Case

Cost Calculation Example

Here's how to calculate the cost of an API call. Using GPT-4o as an example with an input price of $2.50/1M tokens and output price of $10.00/1M tokens:

# Example API Call Cost Breakdown
# --------------------------------
Input tokens:  1,500 (prompt + system message + context)
Output tokens:   500 (model's response)

# Cost Formula
Input cost:  (1,500 / 1,000,000) × $2.50  = $0.00375
Output cost: (  500 / 1,000,000) × $10.00 = $0.00500
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Total cost per request:                   = $0.00875

# Monthly Estimate (10,000 requests)
Monthly cost: $0.00875 × 10,000 = $87.50

API Usage Example

Here's an example using curl to make a cost-effective API request with proper token limits:

# Make an API request with token limits
curl https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENAI_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "gpt-4o-mini",
    "max_tokens": 500,
    "messages": [
      {"role": "system", "content": "Be concise."},
      {"role": "user", "content": "Summarize..."}
    ]
  }'

# Response includes token usage for cost tracking:
# "usage": {"prompt_tokens": 15, "completion_tokens": 150}

Frequently Asked Questions

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