AIUtilityVerse
Multiple providers supported
Independent · free to use

Decide which AI model fits your project and budget

AIUtilityVerse gives you original decision support for planning AI spend: estimate API costs before you build, compare models by capability and price, and understand what really drives your bill — across major providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, plus budget APIs and models you can run locally.

Built for beginners, developers, technical teams, and business decision-makers.

Start with a primary tool below

Start with a primary tool

Three free tools that answer the questions most teams ask first. No AI expertise required.

AI API Cost Calculator

Estimate your monthly API spend from request volume, prompt size, and output length.

Decide whether a model fits your budget before you build.

Estimate costs

Model Comparison

Compare pricing, context windows, and capabilities across providers in our catalog side by side.

Decide which model balances quality and cost for your use case.

Compare models

Token Estimator

Convert real text into an approximate token count you can feed into a cost estimate.

Decide how large your prompts and outputs really are.

Estimate tokens
And more: budget APIs and local models

How to estimate AI cost responsibly

A short, repeatable workflow for turning a rough idea into a defensible monthly budget range — not a single false-precision number.

  1. Size a single request

    Estimate the input tokens (prompt, instructions, and any history or documents) and output tokens for one typical request. Paste real text into the Token Estimator instead of guessing.

  2. Project your volume

    Multiply expected requests per day by 30. Be honest about growth and retries — planning at your busy-day rate avoids surprises when usage climbs.

  3. Compare a few models

    The same workload can cost very differently across models. Compare two or three candidates that meet your quality and context-window needs, not just the cheapest per-token option.

  4. Build a range, then verify

    Add a margin for longer prompts and heavier days to get a low-to-high range. Confirm current rates directly with your provider before committing to a budget.

The calculators on this site produce planning estimates from standard pay-as-you-go rates. They do not reflect enterprise or committed-use discounts, regional pricing, taxes, or platform fees — always treat the result as a starting point, not a billing guarantee.

Estimate your monthly AI API costs

Pick a common workload to pre-fill the numbers, or enter your own usage to estimate monthly API costs across providers in our catalog.

Full calculator →
Select a scenario to pre-fill the calculator ↓
AI API Cost Calculator
SCHEDULED SOURCE CHECKS · ESTIMATE UPDATES AS YOU TYPE
≈ ~½ page·~750 words
≈ ~½ page·~375 words

Unsure about token counts? Paste your text into the Token Estimator →

Compare AI models side by side

Compare pricing, context windows, and capabilities across providers in our catalog, then send any model straight to the calculator.

Full comparison tool →

Not sure where to start?

Pick a use case to get a shortlist from models currently active in our catalog.

Catalog rates are a single pricing snapshot, not a full tier schedule. This table does not select rates by prompt length; long prompts may cost more and change the ranking. Use the API cost calculator for supported Haiku 5.5 and xAI prompt tiers. Announced Google increases are not applied before their effective date.

Prices are per 1M tokens (standard pay-as-you-go). Always verify with your provider before budgeting.

Full comparison tool

And more: budget APIs and local models

Two honest paths for a tight budget: the cheapest hosted API for your numbers, or the real monthly bill of running a model on hardware you own or rent.

Cheap
A low price per token in our catalog. Says nothing about who built the model or how it is licensed.
Open-weight
Weights you can download and run yourself. Many come from large companies; "open" licenses vary and may restrict commercial use.
Independent
Built by a small lab or individual. We do not label big-company models as independent, and our hosted catalog lists major providers only.
PATH A · HOSTED API

Lowest-cost models for your workload

Ranked from active token pricing in our catalog. Change the assumptions — the ranking can change too.

Catalog-rate ranking only: this finder does not select prompt pricing tiers. Long prompts can cost more and change the ranking. Use the full API calculator for supported Haiku 5.5 and xAI tiers. Excludes cache writes/storage, tools and regional premiums. Announced Google increases are not applied before their effective date.

Cheapest is not the same as best fit: test quality on your own prompts. Pay-as-you-go rates only; excludes discounts, taxes, and free tiers.

PATH B · LOCAL OR SELF-HOSTED

What running your own model actually costs

Local inference is not free. Enter your own hardware price, power draw, and electricity bill — or a rental rate quoted by a compute host. Defaults are placeholders, not quotes.

Owned hardware

Minimum 1 month

Whole system under load

From your utility bill

Rented compute

Your host's quoted price

Storage, bandwidth, monitoring, domain — applied to both paths

Owned hardware
Amortization$50.00
Electricity (42 kWh)$8.40
Overhead$0.00
Owned total / month$58.40
Rented compute
Compute rental$0.00
Overhead$0.00
Rented total / month$0.00

Electricity = watts / 1000 x hours x rate. Excludes your time, cooling, resale value, and taxes. These totals say nothing about speed or output quality relative to hosted models.

Before shipping any model, read its license and acceptable-use terms yourself — they decide whether commercial or hosted use is allowed.

Current and upcoming models, for beginners

A short, hand-checked list from provider documentation. Each row shows two separate things: what the provider's own page says (source status), and whether our live pricing catalog can estimate it yet (catalog coverage). They often differ for a while after a launch.

Baseline editorial review 2026-10-07; later checks are dated in individual notes.Updated by hand, not automatically. Newer models may exist; check the linked sources.

Available in the API

Preview

  • Mistral Large 4
    MistralPreview
    Checked 19 Oct 2026: public preview released 6 October. Open weights do not mean free hosting: its 1.05T total parameters require substantial infrastructure. Confirm the license and hardware needs before self-hosting.Preview and promotional pricing are not treated as a stable calculator rate. Check the provider’s currency, offer terms and API availability.
    Checking catalog
    Mistral Large 4 model card(opens in a new tab)
  • Gemini 3.1 Pro
    GooglePreview
    Listed as preview. Preview models can change or be withdrawn; avoid them for anything you cannot easily switch.
    Checking catalog
    Gemini API models(opens in a new tab)

Announced, not released

  • GPT-6.1 Sol Ultrafast
    OpenAIAnnounced only
    Described at DevDay 2026 as coming soon. It is a speed mode or tier of GPT-6.1 Sol, not a separate released model, so it has no estimate here.
    No estimate (not released)
    OpenAI DevDay 2026 recap(opens in a new tab)

Editorial scope: a sample from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Mistral pages we actually checked. It is not exhaustive across all providers we track, and listing a model here is not a claim that it is the newest or best. Announced-only items never get budget estimates. Prices are never typed into this list; estimates come only from active catalog pricing.

Popular model comparisons

Dedicated pages for the most common AI model comparison questions — each with current pricing, a filtered comparison table, and FAQ.

GPT-4o vs Claude 3.5 Sonnet (historical)
An older head-to-head, kept with a method for comparing current models.
Choosing an AI API for coding
How to test models on your own code: pass rate, context, retries.
Finding the cheapest adequate API
Low-cost models from our catalog and how to pick one that passes.
GPT-4o mini vs Claude Haiku (historical)
Older budget models, plus how to test small models today.
Choosing an AI API for documents
Long-context accuracy, chunking, and pricing thresholds.
OpenAI vs Google Gemini
Provider-level pricing and capability comparison.
Choosing an AI API for high volume
Batch pricing, rate limits, and cost per accepted result.
Choosing an AI API for writing
Blind comparison and editing time per published piece.

Guides & decision resources

Original, practical guidance for the decisions behind the numbers — each guide covers one topic in depth.

AI API pricing: a practical planning guide

Work through a complete cost-estimation workflow, from prototype to a monthly budget range you can defend.

Read guide
OpenAI API pricing explained
How GPT model pricing is structured and what drives your bill.
Claude API pricing explained
Understanding Anthropic Claude token rates and planning trade-offs.
Gemini API pricing explained
How Google Gemini pricing works and where it fits your workload.
OpenAI vs Claude for API workloads
A practical decision framework for choosing between the two.
Choosing a low-cost AI API
How to weigh price against quality for high-volume use cases.
Understanding AI agent costs
Why inference price alone is not the total cost of running an agent.
Estimating AI automation ROI
How to build a realistic, defensible savings estimate.
Browse all tools & calculators

Methodology & data transparency

How our numbers are produced, and what they do and do not include.

Sourced from official pages
Supported provider pricing is taken from each provider's official pricing documentation.
Scheduled checks
Official sources are checked on a recurring schedule. Unusual or structural changes are held for human review.
Transparent sources
Every supported provider links back to its official source page, with a last-verified date.

Prices shown are standard pay-as-you-go rates. Enterprise, committed-use, regional, provisioned, and batch pricing may differ, and providers change prices without fixed schedules. Always confirm final pricing with your provider before budgeting.

Read the full methodologyView pricing sources & data status

Frequently asked questions

How are AI API costs calculated?
AI APIs charge per token — roughly ¾ of a word. You pay separately for input tokens (your prompt, context, and history) and output tokens (the text the model generates). The per-token rates are multiplied by your monthly request volume to produce a total cost. AIUtilityVerse uses pay-as-you-go rates published by each provider on their official pricing pages.
What is the difference between input and output tokens?
Input tokens are everything you send to the model in a single request — your system prompt, user message, conversation history, and any documents you include. Output tokens are the text the model writes in reply. They are billed at different rates: output tokens typically cost more than input tokens because generating text requires more computation than reading it.
Which AI model is the cheapest?
There is no single cheapest model for every task. The right choice depends on your context-window requirements, output-quality needs, and expected volume. Use the Model Comparison tool to see a side-by-side comparison at your actual workload, and treat the result as a starting point for your own testing.
How often is pricing updated?
Supported official pricing sources are checked automatically on a recurring production schedule, normally once every 24 hours while the service is active. Unusual or structural changes are held for review. You can see each provider’s most recent active-price verification date on the Pricing Sources & Data Status page. Because providers change prices without fixed schedules, always confirm current pricing directly with your provider before finalising a budget.
Are these estimates the same as my provider invoice?
No — these are estimates based on standard pay-as-you-go rates. Your actual invoice may differ because enterprise or committed-use discounts, regional pricing variations, taxes, platform fees, and rate-limit reservation charges are not reflected here. Treat these figures as a starting point for budget planning, not a billing guarantee.
Is AIUtilityVerse free to use?
Yes. Every calculator and comparison tool on AIUtilityVerse is free to use with no account, subscription, or registration required. The site is independently run.
Does AIUtilityVerse store the information I enter into calculators?
No. All calculator inputs — token counts, request volumes, workload estimates, and business metrics — are processed entirely in your browser and are never sent to our servers or stored anywhere. When you close or refresh the page, your inputs are gone. The only data we collect is anonymous, aggregated analytics such as which tools are used and how often. No input values are ever included in analytics events.