AI Inference Budget Calculator
Estimate the ongoing budget required to serve AI model inference at scale.
About AI Inference Budget Calculator
Inference cost is driven by request volume rather than training compute, so budgeting for a production AI feature means projecting daily traffic and multiplying by your per-request cost — which itself depends on model size, average tokens per request, and hosting method. This calculator scales your daily request cost up to monthly and annual figures so you can compare against expected revenue or budget caps before launch.
Formula
monthly_cost = requests_per_day × cost_per_request × days_per_month
- requests_per_day
- Average daily request volume
- cost_per_request
- Cost to serve a single request
- days_per_month
- Days in the billing period
Worked example
With the default values below, AI Inference Budget Calculator returns Monthly Cost of $3,000.00. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.
Inputs used
- Requests per Dayaccepts 0–1,000,000,000 requests
- 50,000 requests
- Cost per Requestaccepts 0–100 $/request
- 0.002 $/request
- Days per Monthaccepts 1–31 days
- 30 days
Results
- Monthly Cost
- $3,000.00
- Daily Cost
- $100.00
- Annual Cost
- $36,000.00
- Monthly Requests
- 1,500,000 requests
Step by step
- 1Monthly requests= 1,500,000 requests
- 2Monthly cost= $3000.00
Assumptions and limits
- The result is derived only from the 3 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
- In particular, this calculator does not take inflation, tax or compounding frequency into account.
- Figures are rounded for display to 2 decimal places, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.
How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I find my cost per request?
Use the Cost per Query Calculator to derive cost per request from your model's token pricing and average prompt/completion lengths.
Does traffic vary by day in real deployments?
Yes — this calculator assumes a flat daily average; for spiky or seasonal traffic, model peak-day costs separately to ensure your budget covers worst-case load.
Should I include cold-start or idle infrastructure cost?
No, this figure is purely the marginal cost per served request. Use the AI Deployment Cost Calculator to add fixed infrastructure costs like idle instances or load balancers.