Best LLM API Pricing for Startups & Side Projects
Budget and efficient-tier LLM models priced under $1/M tokens. Ideal for prototypes, chatbots, content pipelines, and any project where cost-per-call matters more than raw capability.
- Chatbots and customer support automation
- Content generation and summarisation pipelines
- Classification, tagging, and extraction tasks
- Rapid prototyping and MVP development
- High-volume, low-complexity inference
- Developer side projects and personal tools
At $0.15/M input tokens, 1 million API calls with 500-token prompts costs ~$75. Starter-tier models are the right default until you hit a quality ceiling.
- Complex multi-step reasoning or math
- Mission-critical code generation
- Long-document analysis (>100K tokens)
Starter-tier models(0)
All tiersFrequently asked questions
What is the cheapest LLM API available right now?
As of July 2026, Gemini 2.0 Flash ($0.10/M input) and GPT-4o Mini ($0.15/M input) are the lowest-cost production-grade models. Open-weight models via Together AI or Fireworks can go lower for high-volume workloads.
Are budget LLMs good enough for production?
For most classification, summarisation, and chat tasks — yes. Models like GPT-4o Mini and Gemini 2.5 Flash score 58–72 on intelligence benchmarks, which is sufficient for the majority of production use cases.
How do I estimate my monthly LLM API cost?
Multiply your average prompt length (tokens) × calls/month × input price per token. Add output tokens × output price. Most starter workloads cost $10–$200/month at this tier.
What is prompt caching and how much does it save?
Prompt caching re-uses the KV cache for repeated system prompts, cutting input costs by 50–90%. If your prompts share a long system message, caching can reduce your bill by 60%+ at this tier.