Claude Sonnet vs GPT-6 Sol API Cost Comparison
Compare monthly token costs for Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs GPT-6.1 Sol across identical input, output, and prompt caching workloads.
Describe Your Workload
= 30,000 requests a month (30 days)
System prompt + chat history + retrieved documents + the user's message.
Count too: they bill as output.
Rule of thumb for English: is roughly 750 words.
With , the repeated start of each prompt is billed at the cheaper cache-read rate.
Claude Sonnet 5.5
- Input: 30M tokens @ $2/M
- $60.00
- Cached input: 30M tokens @ $0.1/M
- $3.00
- Output: 15M tokens @ $10/M
- $150.00
- Total per month
- $213.00
Cost = tokens ÷ 1,000,000 × price per 1M, summed for input, cached input and output
Cheapest mid-tier model for this workload: Mistral Large 4 at $54.60/month (74% less). Cheapest overall: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash at $9.39/month. Cheaper models can be weaker, so test them on your own prompts before switching.
This Workload on Every Model
60M input and 15M output tokens a month at real-time prices. Cheapest first; tap a model to load it above.
| Model | Tier | Input / 1M | Cached / 1M | Output / 1M | Context | Monthly cost | vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek | Budget | $0.045 | $0.018 | $0.5 | 1M | $9.39 | -96% |
| Anthropic | Budget | $0.1 | $0.01 | $0.5 | 1M | $10.80 | -95% |
| OpenAI | Budget | $0.1 | $0.01 | $0.5 | 1.1M | $10.80 | -95% |
| Alibaba Qwen | Budget | $0.15 | $0.016 | $0.47 | 1M | $12.03 | -94% |
| Meta (open weights) | Budget | $0.35 | $0.17 | $1 | 524.3K | $30.60 | -86% |
| Budget | $0.25 | $0.025 | $1.5 | 1M | $30.75 | -86% | |
| Mistral | Mid | $0.7 | $0.07 | $2.1 | 1M | $54.60 | -74% |
| DeepSeek | Mid | $0.103 | $0.098 | $4.11 | 1M | $67.68 | -68% |
| Mid | $0.825 | $0.0825 | $4.125 | 1M | $89.10 | -58% | |
| OpenAI | Mid | $1 | $0.05 | $5 | 1.1M | $106.50 | -50% |
| xAI | Flagship | $2 | $0.5 | $6 | 500K | $165.00 | -23% |
| Anthropic | Mid | $2 | $0.1 | $10 | 1M | $213.00 | selected |
| Flagship | $2 | $0.1 | $10 | 1M | $213.00 | 0% | |
| OpenAI | Mid | $2 | $0.1 | $10 | 1.1M | $213.00 | 0% |
| Anthropic | Flagship | $4 | $0.2 | $20 | 1M | $426.00 | +100% |
| Anthropic | Flagship | $10 | $0.25 | $50 | 1M | $1,057.50 | +396% |
| OpenAI | Flagship | $10 | $1 | $50 | 1.1M | $1,080.00 | +407% |
Prices are the per-token rates OpenRouter listed on 5 Nov 2026. Buying direct from a provider can be priced differently, and some providers charge more for very long prompts, so check the provider's pricing page before you commit a budget. Cache-write charges (paid the first time a prefix is cached) are not included; with a high cache share they add little. A month is 30 days.
Notes for This Preset
At 1,000 requests per day (30,000 requests/month) with 2,000 input tokens and 500 output tokens per request, Claude Sonnet 5.5 and GPT-6.1 Sol cost an identical $213.00/month ($7.10 per 1,000 requests) with 50% prompt caching on OpenRouter (5 November 2026). Without prompt caching, the bill rises to $270.00/month—caching saves 21% immediately. Both models charge $2.00/1M uncached input, $0.10/1M cached input, and $10.00/1M output. If this workload can run on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash ($0.045 input / $0.50 output), the monthly bill drops to $9.39.
How can I lower the API bill for this workload?
Three levers, in order of effort: cache the repeated start of the prompt (system prompt, documents, tool definitions), move work that can wait to the Batch API, and test a cheaper model on your own prompts. Shorter answers help too, because output tokens cost several times more than input tokens.
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