AI Budget Planner
Plan AI API budgets, target gross margin, subscription pricing, cache savings, retry overhead, model routing, and cost per successful AI task.
Advanced budget planner
Model a real AI product budget, not just a token bill.
Estimate gross margin, recommended subscription pricing, cache savings, retry overhead, model routing, and cost per successful task for common AI application scenarios.
Usage and margin assumptions
Model routing mix
Route shares are normalized automatically, so a 50 / 30 / 20 split and a 5 / 3 / 2 split produce the same routing economics.
| Scenario | Routing mix | Monthly model cost | Cost / successful task | Suggested subscription | Model requests after retries |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Your routing mixUses the three model shares configured above. | 55% OpenAI GPT-5.4 mini30% Google Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite15% Anthropic Claude Haiku 4.5 | $59.84 | $0.0050 | $1.99 / customer | 27,064 |
| Cost-saver routingPush routine work toward lower-cost models and reserve mini models for fallback. | 45% OpenAI GPT-5.4 nano35% DeepSeek DeepSeek V4 Flash20% Google Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite | $16.23 | $0.0014 | $0.54 / customer | 27,064 |
| Balanced productionUse low-cost models for volume with a stronger tier for harder tasks. | 45% OpenAI GPT-5.4 mini35% Google Gemini 3 Flash Preview20% Anthropic Claude Haiku 4.5 | $66.51 | $0.0055 | $2.22 / customer | 27,064 |
| Premium agent qualityRoute more work to reasoning and premium models when quality matters more than unit cost. | 35% Anthropic Claude Opus 4.835% OpenAI GPT-5.530% xAI Grok 4.3 | $340.74 | $0.0284 | $11.36 / customer | 27,064 |
Your routing mix
$59.84Uses the three model shares configured above.
55% OpenAI GPT-5.4 mini30% Google Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite15% Anthropic Claude Haiku 4.5
- Cost / successful task
- $0.0050
- Suggested subscription
- $1.99 / customer
- Model requests after retries
- 27,064
Cost-saver routing
$16.23Push routine work toward lower-cost models and reserve mini models for fallback.
45% OpenAI GPT-5.4 nano35% DeepSeek DeepSeek V4 Flash20% Google Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite
- Cost / successful task
- $0.0014
- Suggested subscription
- $0.54 / customer
- Model requests after retries
- 27,064
Balanced production
$66.51Use low-cost models for volume with a stronger tier for harder tasks.
45% OpenAI GPT-5.4 mini35% Google Gemini 3 Flash Preview20% Anthropic Claude Haiku 4.5
- Cost / successful task
- $0.0055
- Suggested subscription
- $2.22 / customer
- Model requests after retries
- 27,064
Premium agent quality
$340.74Route more work to reasoning and premium models when quality matters more than unit cost.
35% Anthropic Claude Opus 4.835% OpenAI GPT-5.530% xAI Grok 4.3
- Cost / successful task
- $0.0284
- Suggested subscription
- $11.36 / customer
- Model requests after retries
- 27,064
These simulations are planning estimates only. They do not include payment processing fees, support costs, hosting, vector databases, observability, taxes, or provider-specific billing adjustments.
Pricing disclaimer
Disclaimer: All prices, token counts, forecasts, comparisons, and cost calculations are estimates for general planning only. They are not financial, tax, accounting, procurement, purchasing, or legal advice. AI providers may change pricing, billing units, model names, discounts, and terms at any time. Always verify current pricing on the provider's official pricing page. The official provider bill, billing dashboard, and invoice are the final source of truth.
Why AI budgets fail after launch
AI features often look inexpensive in a prototype because the team only models one request. Real products multiply cost through active users, multi-step workflows, long context, retries, low cache hit rates, and premium model fallbacks.
What this planner adds
The planner connects product usage to business outcomes: successful tasks, model routing, cache savings, retry overhead, gross margin, and suggested subscription pricing. That makes it more useful for founders and teams than a plain token calculator.
How teams should use it
Start with a realistic preset, adjust token assumptions from real prompts, choose a routing strategy, then compare monthly model cost and cost per successful task against your planned customer pricing.
Example: AI agent workflow
An AI agent may need five model calls to complete one user-visible task: classify intent, retrieve context, plan actions, call tools, and write the final response. Even if each request looks cheap, retries and premium fallback routing can change the true cost per successful task.
Formula for suggested subscription pricing
Recommended subscription price = estimated model cost per customer / (1 - target gross margin). If your target gross margin is 80%, a customer who costs $4 in model usage needs at least about $20 in subscription revenue before other business costs.
Why cache hit rate matters
A reusable policy answer, repeated document summary, or stable product description can often be cached. A higher cache hit rate lowers billable model requests and gives teams more room to use stronger models where quality actually matters.
Need the simpler request-level calculator?
Use the API Cost Calculator when you only need per-request, daily, monthly, and yearly cost estimates.
Frequently asked questions
What is an AI budget planner?
An AI budget planner estimates the monthly cost of AI features by combining token usage, model routing, cache hit rate, retry rate, successful task rate, customer count, and target gross margin.
How is this different from an AI API cost calculator?
An API cost calculator usually estimates request-level spend. This planner goes further by estimating cost per successful task, suggested subscription pricing, cache savings, retry overhead, and multiple routing scenarios.
Can I use it for an AI SaaS product?
Yes. It is designed for AI SaaS founders, AI agent builders, support automation teams, and product teams that need to test whether planned subscription prices can support model costs.
Does the planner call OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, or Grok?
No. The planner runs locally in your browser using public model pricing data and does not send prompts, assumptions, or budget plans to an AI provider.
Are suggested subscription prices financial advice?
No. Suggested prices are planning estimates only. They are not financial, tax, procurement, purchasing, or legal advice, and official provider bills and invoices remain the final source of truth.