Question 1

How much do AI assistants actually cost per month in 2026?

Accepted Answer

Most consumer AI subscriptions land at $20/month — ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, Google AI Pro, Perplexity Pro and Cursor all converge there. Microsoft 365 Copilot is $30/user/month. Mistral Le Chat Pro is $15/month — the cheapest serious chat tier. Jarvis starts free (40 requests every week), then Pro at $16/month ($144/year, about $12/month billed yearly) or Unlimited at $32/month. Granola is $14/month for meeting notes. On the API side, Claude Haiku ($1/$5 per million tokens) is the cheapest serious frontier model and Claude Opus 4.5 ($15/$75) is the most expensive. For 20 tasks/day with medium prompts and outputs expect $10-30/month per provider. Run the calculator for a personalized per-provider estimate.

Question 2

How does the AI Cost Calculator work?

Accepted Answer

Set five inputs: tasks per day (slider 1-200), average prompt length (short ~100 / medium ~500 / long ~2,000 tokens), average output length (short ~200 / medium ~1,000 / long ~4,000 tokens), the providers to compare, and a subscription strategy (subscriptions only / API or BYOK only / hybrid). Subscription cost is the vendor flat fee. API cost is your tasksPerDay × 22 working days × (promptTokens × inputPrice + outputTokens × outputPrice). Hybrid picks the cheaper of the two per provider. The calculator ranks providers cheapest to most expensive and recommends one based on your usage.

Question 3

Which AI assistant is cheapest in 2026?

Accepted Answer

For occasional chat use (under 30 tasks/day): Mistral Le Chat Pro at $15/month is the cheapest paid subscription, or Jarvis free tier costs nothing. For heavy programmatic use (50+ tasks/day): Claude Haiku via API ($1/$5 per million tokens) and Mistral Small ($0.20/$0.60) are the cheapest serious models. The hybrid strategy almost always wins at scale — most providers cost less on per-token API billing than on the flat subscription once volume gets high enough.

Question 4

Is ChatGPT Plus cheaper than the OpenAI API?

Accepted Answer

It depends on volume. ChatGPT Plus at $20/month is a fixed cost. The OpenAI API charges per token — GPT-4o is $2.50/$10 per million tokens, GPT-5 is $5/$15, GPT-5 mini is $0.30/$1.20. For a typical 20 tasks/day with medium-length prompts and outputs, the API often comes in under $10/month — cheaper than Plus. For heavy users at 100+ tasks/day, the math flips and the flat subscription becomes the better deal. The calculator does this comparison automatically with your numbers.

Question 5

What does Claude Pro vs Claude Haiku API actually cost?

Accepted Answer

Claude Pro is a flat $20/month for Claude chat plus Claude Code, Cowork and Research, under usage limits. Claude Haiku via the API is pay-per-token at $1/$5 per million tokens — for typical light to medium use this comes to $1-10/month, much cheaper than Pro. Claude Opus 4.5 API at $15/$75 per million tokens is by far the most expensive option in the family and only makes sense for high-stakes single tasks where reasoning quality beats cost.

Question 6

Is Jarvis really free?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Jarvis has a real working free plan — 40 requests every week, routed per task across frontier models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google — plus a 7-day full Pro trial with no card. Paid plans are Pro at $16/month ($144/year, about $12/month billed yearly) and Unlimited at $32/month, which removes the caps. Bring-your-own-key is not available on any plan: model access is managed for you and bundled into the subscription, so there is no vendor API bill on the side. The only key a user can supply is an optional OpenAI key for the computer-use feature.

Question 7

Can I share my AI cost estimate?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Every result has a unique URL — copy it, tweet it, email it, or use the embed code to drop the calculator into an article or blog post. The shared link always reopens the exact same comparison. Result pages are noindex so they do not compete with the main tool page for search rankings.

Question 8

How accurate is the AI Cost Calculator?

Accepted Answer

The calculator uses pricing verified against each vendor's public pricing page in May 2026. Token estimates per prompt/output preset assume roughly 4 characters per token (the OpenAI tiktoken standard for English prose) and 22 working days per month. Actual costs depend on your specific usage patterns, model selection, region, and any volume discounts. The output is an estimate — verify with the vendor before purchase. We refresh the dataset quarterly.

AI Cost Calculator: What Your Stack Costs.

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