What would that AI feature actually cost?

Pick a use case, drag the sliders to your traffic, and see a monthly Claude API bill across four model tiers. Real July 2026 list prices, honest arithmetic, no sales funnel.

Your feature

Interactions per month One interaction is one request to the model.

Average input tokens Prompt, system instructions, and any context you send. Roughly 0.75 tokens per word.

Average output tokens The reply length you expect back.

Batch processing (not real time) Asynchronous batches are half price. Good for overnight jobs, not for chat. Prompt caching on repeated context Assumes 60% of input is a stable, cached prefix billed at about a tenth of the input rate. Simplified: cache writes cost slightly extra.

Monthly estimate

Same feature, four price points. The craft is knowing which tier the job really needs.