For agent builders · Free
How much does your AI agent cost per month?
AI agents make thousands of small paid calls — chat completions, tool invocations, embeddings. Estimate the monthly bill for the workload you actually run, and see which model would make the same agent cheaper without breaking it.
Estimate your AI bill, model by model.
Agents make thousands of small paid calls. Estimate your monthly bill, and see which model would let the same agent run for less.
| Model | $ / M input | $ / M output | Monthly | vs. current |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Llama 3.1 8BMeta · Together | $0.18 | $0.18 | $108 | −96% |
| GPT-4o miniOpenAI | $0.15 | $0.60 | $135 | −96% |
| Qwen 2.5 72BAlibaba · OpenRouter | $0.40 | $0.40 | $240 | −92% |
| DeepSeek V3DeepSeek | $0.27 | $1.10 | $245 | −92% |
| Gemini 2.5 FlashGoogle | $0.30 | $2.50 | $400 | −87% |
| Llama 3.1 70BMeta · Together | $0.88 | $0.88 | $528 | −82% |
| Claude Haiku 4Anthropic | $0.80 | $4.00 | $800 | −73% |
| Mistral Large 2Mistral | $2.00 | $6.00 | $1,600 | −47% |
| Gemini 2.5 ProGoogle | $1.25 | $10.00 | $1,625 | −46% |
| GPT-4.1OpenAI | $2.00 | $8.00 | $1,800 | −40% |
| Claude Sonnet 4Anthropic | $3.00 | $15.00 | $3,000 | current |
| GPT-5OpenAI | $5.00 | $20.00 | $4,500 | +50% |
| Claude Opus 4Anthropic | $15.00 | $75.00 | $15,000 | +400% |
Prices reflect typical 2026 list pricing and may change. Verify with each provider before you commit to a budget.
Price alone doesn't tell you if a cheaper model can safely replace yours.
Put a hard cap on agent spend →AI agent cost, answered
How much does an AI agent cost per month?
A typical mid-volume agent (50k–500k paid calls per month, 5k input + 1k output tokens) costs $250–$6,000 on Claude Sonnet 4 — and roughly 1/10 of that on DeepSeek V3 or Llama 70B. Use the calculator above with your real numbers.
Why is the AI agent cost calculator different from the LLM one?
It is the same engine, but the default workload assumes more calls per month and a higher average token count — the shape of an agentic loop, not a single chat. You can override everything in the form.
How do I control agent spend, not just estimate it?
Estimation is the first step. Spend Control is what runs in production: per-agent budgets, allowlists, pre-settlement approval rules, and independent reconciliation. Read the x402 spending limits page for the protocol-level version.
What is the cheapest LLM for an agent in 2026?
For routing cheap calls (intent classification, extraction, RAG rerank), Llama 3.1 8B, Qwen 2.5 72B and GPT-4o mini are the safest cheap defaults. For planning and tool use, you usually need Sonnet 4 or GPT-4.1. ModelSwitch measures this on your real agent traces.
Does prompt caching change the math?
Yes — Claude caches prompts at 90% off the input price, and OpenAI has its own caching tier. The calculator ignores caching to keep one clean list price; in production, caching can cut your bill by half on long-system-prompt agents.