How much should a startup spend on AI APIs?

Most pre-seed startups spend $50-$200/month on AI APIs during development. Seed-stage companies typically spend $200-$1,000/month. The key is starting with budget models (GPT-4o mini, Gemini Flash, DeepSeek) and upgrading as revenue justifies it.

What is the cheapest AI API for a startup?

GPT-oss 20B at $0.08/$0.35 is the cheapest. For better quality at low cost, DeepSeek V4 Flash ($0.14/$0.28) and GPT-4o mini ($0.15/$0.60) offer excellent value.

How do I estimate AI API costs for my startup?

Estimate your monthly tokens: (average prompt length × requests/day × 30) for input tokens, and (average completion length × requests/day × 30) for output tokens. Multiply by the model's per-token price. Our Startup Cost Planner does this automatically with scaling projections.

AI Startup Cost Planner

Budget your AI API spend from pre-seed to Series A. See exactly what you'll pay at each stage — and how to cut costs by 60%+.

📋 Your Startup Profile

Startup Stage

Pre-Seed

Building MVP

Seed

Early users

Series A

Scaling up

What are you building?

Monthly Budget

$200

$50$5,000

Avg. Input Tokens per Request

Typical: chatbot 1000-2000, code 2000-5000, content 500-1500

Avg. Output Tokens per Request

Typical: chatbot 300-800, code 500-2000, content 800-2000

Expected Monthly Growth

📊 Your Cost Breakdown

12-Month Projection

Month	Requests	Cost	Cumulative

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Prices based on published API pricing as of Jun 2, 2026. Actual costs may vary. View all pricing data.

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