The Real Cost of LLMs: Why Expenses Are Lower Than Expected

💰 The Real Cost of LLMs: Why Expenses Are Lower Than Expected

Operating expenses for OpenAI and Anthropic may be lower than forecasted, as ChatGPT Plus users often do not utilize their available token limits to the maximum. At the same time, API pricing includes a significant margin.

🌍 Understanding the difference between API costs and actual consumption helps companies better plan their AI implementation budgets. High margins allow vendors to offer discounts through caching (up to 90%) and Batch APIs (50%).

👤 When choosing between a subscription and an API, it is important to consider that 'unlimited' plans are often more profitable for vendors due to underutilization of limits. Developers should choose models based on context window size to avoid surcharges for long prompts.

Source 1: https://www.finout.io/blog/openai-vs-anthropic-api-pricing-comparison