Cheapest AI API for HR

Find the cheapest AI API for resume screening, job descriptions, employee engagement, and policy compliance. We ranked 42 models by cost for HR workloads.

Calculate Your HR AI Cost

Enter your HR workload to see the cheapest models for your use case.

Task:

HR API Cost Ranking

Every model ranked by cost for a typical HR workload: 200 tasks/day, 1,500 input / 500 output tokens per task.

Top Picks by Company Size

Small Business / Startup (under $10/mo)
Gemini 2.0 Flash Lite$1.35/mo
DeepSeek V4 Flash$2.13/mo
GPT-oss 20B$2.18/mo
Mid-Market HR Team ($10-75/mo)
GPT-4o mini$4.35/mo
Mistral Small 4$4.35/mo
Claude Haiku 4.5$9.57/mo
Enterprise / Staffing Firm ($75-300/mo)
Claude Sonnet 4$43.56/mo
Gemini 2.5 Pro$19.64/mo
GPT-5$144.21/mo

Strategy: Tiered HR AI Pipeline

HR tasks vary from simple (resume keyword matching) to complex (legal policy review). Use a tiered pipeline to route tasks by complexity.

Tiered HR Pipeline (500 tasks/day)
Tier 1: 65% resume scoring/FAQ โ†’ Gemini Flash Lite ($0.075/$0.30)$7.76/mo
Tier 2: 25% job descriptions/survey summaries โ†’ GPT-4o mini ($0.15/$0.60)$7.92/mo
Tier 3: 10% policy compliance/complex analysis โ†’ Claude Sonnet 4 ($3/$15)$23.76/mo
Total with pipeline$39.44/mo (vs $118.80 on Sonnet for all)

This tiered approach saves 67% compared to using a premium model for everything. Route resume scoring and FAQ responses to budget models, and reserve premium models for policy compliance and complex analysis.

HR-Specific Considerations

Find the cheapest model for your HR workload

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