What will AI actually cost your company?
Model spend across xAI, OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity from the three things that really drive cost: how many people use AI, how much content they generate, and which provider handles each task. Rates are pulled from each vendor's pricing pages, with planning estimates as a fallback.
- Monthly tokens modelled
- 250M
- OpenAI monthly
- $5.5k
- Cheapest annual
- $11k
The budget statement
With 25 people at moderate usage (10M tokens/user/month, 40% output), OpenAI lands around $5.5k/mo — budget $59k–$77k for the year, about $220 per user per month. xAI is the cheapest option at $900/mo, and Anthropic is the strongest fit for the work you selected.
Where the money goes
Monthly API usage versus seat licences, per provider.
Same team, different appetite
Annual spend for 25 people as usage intensity changes. Appetite moves cost more than headcount does.
| Provider | Light | Moderate | Heavy |
|---|---|---|---|
| xAI | $2.2k | $11k | $43k |
| OpenAI | $37k | $66k | $174k |
| Anthropic | $13k | $40k | $142k |
| Perplexity | $33k | $44k | $87k |
Rate card & sources
Blended $/million tokens per provider. Live rows are pulled from each vendor's own pricing page; anything unavailable falls back to the planning estimates from the cost model.
| Provider | Input $/M | Output $/M | Seat $/user/mo | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| xAIlive · 20 hours ago | $2.00 | $6.00 | — | pricing page |
| OpenAIlive · 20 hours ago | $3.86 | $24.13 | $100.00 | pricing page |
| Anthropiclive · 20 hours ago | $4.01 | $22.25 | $20.00 | pricing page |
| Perplexitylive · 6 days ago | $2.10 | $8.70 | $99.00 | pricing page |
Ranges shown on provider cards are −20% / +30% around the estimate, matching the planning bands in the source model. Treat every figure as a budget range, not a quote.
How to explain this to a board or a client
Seat-based use is predictable
If a team mainly uses chat-style tools, cost scales with headcount: a few hundred dollars a month for small teams, low thousands for mid-size, procurement-level annual contracts at scale.
Content appetite drives the real cost
A ten-person team using AI lightly is inexpensive. A ten-person team generating memos, briefs, outbound campaigns and document reviews all day can outspend a much larger passive team.
Output tokens are expensive
The same workflow can double in cost if it produces long outputs. Summaries, briefs and research reports cost more than classification, routing or extraction.
Route each job to the cheapest model that does it well
The goal is not to pick one model forever. Track cost per matter, per campaign, per client or per case — not just total AI spend.
Provider fit by workflow
| General business productivity | OpenAI, Anthropic |
| Long-context reasoning / API experimentation | xAI, Anthropic |
| Search-grounded research with citations | Perplexity |
| High-volume automation | OpenAI, xAI |
| Document-heavy legal or diligence workflows | Anthropic, OpenAI |
| Client-facing research tools | Perplexity, OpenAI |
AI cost is not one number. It depends on how many people use it, how much content they generate, and which provider handles each task.