Published 2026-05-21 · NextModel Research

Direct answer

Estimate model spend from input tokens, output tokens, request volume, and price per million tokens, before ops surprises you. This guide is written for Australian product and platform teams comparing model quality, spend, routing policy, and production rollout risk.

The four variables that drive AI API cost

Before it becomes an ops problem, AI API cost is multiplication. Take average input tokens, average output tokens, request count, and the model's price per 1M tokens. Do it once for a cheap model and once for a stronger one so product owners see the gap with real numbers, not vibes.

VariableExample
Input tokens1,000,000
Output tokens1,000,000
Requests1
Doubao estimate$0.318

Use the same formula in code

The pricing estimate API uses the same math as the public calculator. You can wire internal planning tools without copying price tables by hand.

curl
curl https://nextmodel.app/api/pricing/estimate \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"model":"doubao-seed-2-0-mini","input_tokens":1000000,"output_tokens":1000000,"requests":1}'
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