Published 2026-05-21 · NextModel Research
Direct answer
A practical formula for Canadian product and engineering teams estimating model spend from tokens, request volume, and price. This guide is written for Canada-based 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.
| Variable | Example |
|---|---|
| Input tokens | 1,000,000 |
| Output tokens | 1,000,000 |
| Requests | 1 |
| 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}'