RAG Pipeline LLM API Cost Estimator
Estimate monthly LLM costs for a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipeline. RAG pipelines have higher input token counts due to retrieved context.
Recommended Setup
Cost Comparison: All Cloud Models
Based on 200M input + 30M output tokens/month
| Model | Provider | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Llama 3.1 8B (Groq) | Groq | $12.40 |
| gpt-oss-120b | OpenAI | $13.10 |
| Doubao Seed 2.0 Mini | Doubao (ByteDance) | $14.70 |
| GPT-5 Nano | OpenAI | $22.00 |
| GLM-4.7 Flash | Zhipu AI (GLM) | $24.00 |
| Gemma 4 26B A4B | $24.20 | |
| Gemma 4 31B | $30.20 | |
| Doubao Pro 32K | Doubao (ByteDance) | $30.40 |
| Hunyuan TurboS | Hunyuan (Tencent) | $30.40 |
| GPT-4.1 Nano | OpenAI | $32.00 |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | $32.00 | |
| Llama 4 Scout (Groq) | Groq | $32.20 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | DeepSeek | $36.40 |
| Qwen3.5-Flash | Qwen (Alibaba) | $37.50 |
| Hunyuan T1 | Hunyuan (Tencent) | $44.80 |
| GPT-4o-mini | OpenAI | $48.00 |
| GPT-OSS 120B (Groq) | Groq | $48.00 |
| Qwen3 Coder Next | Qwen (Alibaba) | $48.00 |
| DeepSeek V3.2 | DeepSeek | $66.00 |
| Qwen3.6 Flash | Qwen (Alibaba) | $71.90 |
| Qwen3.5-Plus | Qwen (Alibaba) | $75.40 |
| Qwen3 32B (Groq) | Groq | $75.70 |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | OpenAI | $76.00 |
| GPT-5.4 Nano | OpenAI | $77.50 |
| DeepSeek V3 | DeepSeek | $82.90 |
| DeepSeek V3 (Mar 2025) | DeepSeek | $87.00 |
| Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B | Qwen (Alibaba) | $90.00 |
| Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite | $95.00 | |
| Qwen3.7 Plus | Qwen (Alibaba) | $102 |
| GPT-5 Mini | OpenAI | $110 |
| DeepSeek V4 Pro | DeepSeek | $114 |
| Qwen3.6 Plus | Qwen (Alibaba) | $125 |
| GPT-4.1 Mini | OpenAI | $128 |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash | $135 | |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | $135 | |
| Llama 3.3 70B (Groq) | Groq | $142 |
| Qwen3-Max | Qwen (Alibaba) | $145 |
| R1 0528 | DeepSeek | $165 |
| Doubao Seed 2.0 Pro | Doubao (ByteDance) | $165 |
| Kimi K2 | Kimi (Moonshot AI) | $183 |
| Kimi K2.5 (Together) | Together AI | $184 |
| Llama 3.3 70B (Together) | Together AI | $202 |
| DeepSeek R1 | DeepSeek | $215 |
| Qwen3 Coder Plus | Qwen (Alibaba) | $228 |
| Qwen3.5 397B (Together) | Together AI | $228 |
| Qwen3 Max Thinking | Qwen (Alibaba) | $273 |
| GPT-5.4 Mini | OpenAI | $285 |
| GLM-5 | Zhipu AI (GLM) | $296 |
| Kimi K2.7 Code | Kimi (Moonshot AI) | $310 |
| Kimi K2.6 | Kimi (Moonshot AI) | $310 |
| Kimi K2.5 | Kimi (Moonshot AI) | $310 |
| Claude Haiku 4.5★ recommended | Anthropic | $350 |
| o4-mini | OpenAI | $352 |
| o3 Mini | OpenAI | $352 |
| GLM-5-Turbo | Zhipu AI (GLM) | $360 |
| GLM-5.1 | Zhipu AI (GLM) | $412 |
| Qwen3.7 Max | Qwen (Alibaba) | $429 |
| Gemini 3.6 Flash | $525 | |
| GPT-5 | OpenAI | $550 |
| GPT-5 Codex | OpenAI | $550 |
| Gemini 2.5 Pro | $550 | |
| Moonshot V1 (128K) | Kimi (Moonshot AI) | $550 |
| DeepSeek V4 Pro (Together) | Together AI | $552 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | $570 | |
| Kimi K2.7 Code HighSpeed | Kimi (Moonshot AI) | $620 |
| GPT-4.1 | OpenAI | $640 |
| o3 | OpenAI | $640 |
| o4 Mini Deep Research | OpenAI | $640 |
| GPT-5.6 Terra | OpenAI | $760 |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $760 | |
| GPT-4o | OpenAI | $800 |
| GPT-5.4 | OpenAI | $950 |
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Anthropic | $1,050 |
| Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Anthropic | $1,050 |
| Claude Sonnet 4 | Anthropic | $1,050 |
| Kimi K3 | Kimi (Moonshot AI) | $1,050 |
| Claude Opus 4.7 | Anthropic | $1,750 |
| Claude Opus 4.6 | Anthropic | $1,750 |
| Claude Opus 4.8 | Anthropic | $1,750 |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | OpenAI | $1,900 |
| GPT-5.5 | OpenAI | $1,900 |
| GLM-5.2 | Zhipu AI (GLM) | $2,440 |
| o3 Deep Research | OpenAI | $3,200 |
| Claude Opus 4.8 (Fast) | Anthropic | $3,500 |
| o1 | OpenAI | $4,800 |
| Claude Opus 4.1 | Anthropic | $5,250 |
| o3 Pro | OpenAI | $6,400 |
| GPT-5 Pro | OpenAI | $6,600 |
| GPT-5.5 Pro | OpenAI | $11,400 |
| GPT-5.4 Pro | OpenAI | $11,400 |
| o1-pro | OpenAI | $48,000 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are RAG pipeline token costs higher than regular chatbots?
RAG injects retrieved document chunks into every prompt. Each retrieval adds 500–2,000 tokens of context. A moderate RAG system serving 5,000 queries/day can consume 100–500M input tokens per month.
Which LLM is best for RAG pipelines?
Claude Haiku 4.5 ($1/1M input) and GPT-5.4 Nano ($0.20/1M) are popular choices. For RAG with very long context windows, Gemini 3.5 Flash ($1.50/1M) supports 1M tokens per request and has excellent price/performance. For budget-focused RAG, Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite ($0.10/1M) is the cheapest option with 1M context.
Should I self-host the LLM for my RAG pipeline?
If your RAG pipeline consumes 500M+ tokens/month, a self-hosted A100 or two RTX 4090s may become cost-competitive. Use this calculator to find your break-even point.