How much does it cost to build an AI feature?

A basic AI feature (chatbot, summarizer) costs $10-$100/month in API fees on budget models. A production AI agent with RAG costs $50-$500/month. Premium models like GPT-5.5 or Claude Opus 4.8 can push costs to $500-$5,000/month for the same usage. Our planner above estimates your exact costs.

What is the cheapest way to add AI to my app?

Start with budget models: Gemini 2.0 Flash ($0.10/$0.40), DeepSeek V4 Flash ($0.14/$0.28), or GPT-4o mini ($0.15/$0.60). Use model routing to send simple tasks to cheap models and complex tasks to premium ones. Add caching for repeated queries. This can reduce costs by 50-80%.

How do I estimate AI API costs for my startup?

Estimate your daily requests, average input/output tokens per request, and multiply by 30 days. Then check pricing for your chosen model. A startup with 1,000 users making 5 requests/day with 500 input and 300 output tokens spends $9-$450/month depending on the model. Use our budget planner for detailed estimates.

Plan your AI project budget in 60 seconds

Enter your project details. Get a complete budget breakdown with API costs across 34 models — from cheapest to premium.

1 What are you building?

MVP / Prototype

Growth Stage

Scale / Production

Enterprise

Project name (optional)

Expected users People who will use your AI feature

Requests per user / day

Avg tokens per request (in + out) Typical: chatbot 500-800, content 1500-2000, code 1000-1500

2 Model preference

Quality requirement

Provider preference

3 Additional costs (optional)

Infrastructure ($/month) Hosting, DB, vector store, etc.

Development hours Hours to build the AI feature

Your hourly rate ($)

Monthly budget cap ($) Max you're willing to spend/month on API

💰 Your budget breakdown

Top 5 models for your project

Quick comparison: Budget vs Premium

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Related Tools

AI Feature Cost Estimator — Pick feature type, see exact costs
Budget Planner — Step-by-step budget planning wizard
AI API TCO Calculator — See total cost including retries and caching
Cost Calculator — Estimate costs across all 34 models
Cost Scenarios — Real-world cost estimates