LLM Pricing
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Subscription vs API

Weigh an AI subscription against pay-as-you-go API at your usage level. Subscriptions bill per time window rather than per token, so no exact break-even exists: results are given as ranges, with the cache sensitivity and the date each plan was checked.

Plan prices and quotas are maintained by hand and have not been checked with each provider individually. API prices are read from the catalog, so changing the price basis can reverse the conclusion. Quota rules change frequently; the official page takes precedence.

Chat is about 1. An agent plans, searches, calls tools and summarises, so one prompt often triggers 5 to 30 calls. That is how a model with a low per-token price can still be expensive per task.

First-party list price, the like-for-like alternative to a first-party subscription.

≈ 4,800 model calls / month at this usage.

OpenAI PlusBEST FITWithin quota$20.00/mo
Priced against56.6details →$2.00 / $12.00
Your usage via API:$206.64–$245.52/mo
Subscription saves $186.64–$225.52/mo
Break-even ≈ 2 prompts/dayat 50% cache ≈ 2/day3.1× price spread across hostschecked 2026-08-08
What this quota is worth →
Per model call18,000 tok · $0.047
Official quota~160 messages / 3h
Monthly capacity (tightest window: 3h)75,093–311,467 calls · 9,387–38,933 prompts
Same volume at Official API price$3,536.90–$14,670.08
Plan price$20.00

The quota costs about 100% less than buying the same volume through the API.

Based on GPT-5.6 Terra and the profile on the left. Cache-write charges are excluded, so real API cost is slightly higher.

Anthropic ProWithin quota$20.00/mo
Priced against55.3details →$2.00 / $10.00
Your usage via API:$177.84–$216.72/mo
Subscription saves $157.84–$196.72/mo
Break-even ≈ 2 prompts/dayat 50% cache ≈ 2/day2.1× price spread across hostschecked 2026-08-08
What this quota is worth →
Per model call18,000 tok · $0.041
Official quota~45 messages / 5h plus a weekly cap
Monthly capacity, upper bound (tightest known window: 5h)12,672–52,560 calls · 1,584–6,570 prompts
Same volume at Official API price$520.82–$2,160.22
Plan price$20.00

The quota costs about 99% less than buying the same volume through the API.

The official quota includes further caps with no published numbers, so both this capacity and the discount above are overestimates.

Based on Claude Sonnet 5 and the profile on the left. Cache-write charges are excluded, so real API cost is slightly higher.

GitHub EnterpriseWithin quota$39.00/seat/mo
Priced against63.1details →$5.00 / $25.00
Your usage via API:$444.60–$541.80/mo
Subscription saves $405.60–$502.80/mo
Break-even ≈ 1–2 prompts/dayat 50% cache ≈ 1/day2.2× price spread across hostschecked 2026-08-08
What this quota is worth →
Per model call18,000 tok · $0.103
Official quota3,900 AI credits / user / month
Monthly capacity (tightest window: 730h)31,200–31,200 calls · 3,900–3,900 prompts
Same volume at Official API price$3,205.80–$3,205.80
Plan price$39.00

The quota costs about 99% less than buying the same volume through the API.

Based on Claude Opus 5 and the profile on the left. Cache-write charges are excluded, so real API cost is slightly higher.

Cost ranges come from cache-hit uncertainty (±15pp). Capacity ranges come from reading each window quota conservatively vs optimistically. The break-even is a region, not a point, because subscription quotas are time windows that cannot be reduced to a fixed token count.

Rolling windows shorter than a day are normalised against an assumed 176 active hours per month (8h × 22 days); day, week and month caps are calendar windows and are not discounted.

Plans without a computable quota

These publish no absolute quota, or bill in a unit that cannot be mapped to model calls. They are listed here rather than given an invented number.

  • OpenAI FreeFreeFree-tier limits vary by model and are not published as absolute numbers.
  • OpenAI Go$8.00Higher than Free but the allowance is not published as an absolute number.
  • OpenAI Business$25.00Per-seat allowance follows the Pro tier but is not published as an absolute number.
  • Anthropic FreeFreeFree-tier session limits are not published as absolute numbers.
  • Anthropic Team$25.00Per-seat allowance is not published as an absolute number.
  • Google AI Plus$4.99Entry-tier allowance is not published as an absolute number.
  • Google AI Pro$19.99Published only as ~4× the free tier, and the free tier has no absolute number — so no month cap can be derived.
  • Google AI Ultra$249.99Highest-tier allowance is not published as an absolute number.
  • xAI SuperGrok Lite$10.00Rate limits are not published as absolute numbers.
  • xAI SuperGrok$30.00Rate limits are not published as absolute numbers.
  • xAI SuperGrok Heavy$300.00Rate limits are not published as absolute numbers.
  • Perplexity FreeFreeA few Pro searches per day; the standard-search allowance is not published.
  • Perplexity Pro$20.00Quota is in Pro searches, which bundle retrieval plus generation and can't be mapped to model calls.
  • Perplexity Max$200.00Quota is in Pro searches, which bundle retrieval plus generation and can't be mapped to model calls.
  • Mistral FreeFreeBasic limits are not published as absolute numbers.
  • Mistral Pro$14.99Higher limits are not published as absolute numbers.
  • Mistral Team$24.99Per-seat allowance is not published as an absolute number.
  • GitHub FreeFreeMonthly completion and chat caps are tier-specific and not published as premium-request counts.
  • GitHub Pro$10.00Official pages state a premium-request quota without an absolute monthly number.
  • GitHub Pro+$39.00Official pages state the highest premium-request quota without an absolute monthly number.
  • GitHub Business$19.00Per-seat premium-request quota is not published as an absolute number.
  • Cursor HobbyFreeAgent-request limits are not published as absolute numbers.
  • Cursor Pro$20.00Bills as a $20 credit of included API usage rather than a request or token cap — compare with the cost calculator instead.
  • Cursor Pro+$60.00Bills as included API usage rather than a request or token cap.
  • Cursor Ultra$200.00Bills as included API usage rather than a request or token cap.
  • Cursor Teams$40.00Pooled per-seat usage rather than a request or token cap.