How to estimate AI inference costs

When using Sila, you pay AI providers directly for inference (the model's compute). Sila adds no fees.

How pricing works

• You bring your own keys: OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, or your own server (OpenAI‑compatible APIs).
• Pay as you go: Providers bill for tokens (text), images, and audio minutes.
• Local models: With Ollama or similar, inference is free to use, but you pay with your hardware resources and electricity.

Text pricing explained

• Tokens are chunks of text (~3–4 characters per token on average).
• You pay for both input tokens (your prompt + context) and output tokens (the model's reply).
• Providers publish prices, usually "$X per 1M tokens" for input and output separately.

Simple estimate

• Short message: ~100–300 tokens
• Long prompt with files/context: 1k–8k+ tokens
• Model reply: ~200–1,000 tokens

To estimate cost for a message: (input_tokens × input_rate) + (output_tokens × output_rate)

Images and audio

• Vision: You pay per image and/or per processed tokens depending on provider.
• Audio: You pay per minute for transcription or TTS.

Example monthly costs with GPT-5.2

These examples use GPT-5.2 pricing: $1.75 per 1M input tokens, $14.00 per 1M output tokens.

• Starter (casual)
  • 10 chats/day × 30 days = 300 chats
  • ~1,200 tokens/chat total
  • ≈ 360k tokens/month
  • Input: ~180k × $1.75 = $0.32
  • Output: ~180k × $14.00 = $2.52
  • Total: ~$3/month
• Pro (deep work)
  • 30 chats/day × 30 days = 900 chats
  • ~3k tokens/chat total
  • ≈ 2.7M tokens/month
  • Input: ~1.35M × $1.75 = $2.36
  • Output: ~1.35M × $14.00 = $18.90
  • Total: ~$21/month
• Team (5 people)
  • 5 × 30 chats/day × 30 days = 4,500 chats
  • ~3k tokens/chat total
  • ≈ 13.5M tokens/month
  • Input: ~6.75M × $1.75 = $11.81
  • Output: ~6.75M × $14.00 = $94.50
  • Total: ~$106/month