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Cost per seat

How much does AI cost per team member?

Not every seat is equal. A marketing intern and a distinguished engineer use AI very differently. Set your team's mix below to get a monthly cost estimate.

Prices checked 13 Nov 2026

Seat profiles and monthly cost

Default: Claude Sonnet 5.5. Prices are API list prices; each seat’s cost is the profile’s daily use over 22 working days.

Basic

Budget tier · about 3 queries a day

per seat, per month

$0.26

Occasional users who interact with AI a few times per week for simple tasks like grammar checks, quick summaries, or answering straightforward questions.

10

10 seats · monthly total

$2.64

Use cases, usage and recommended models

Typical use cases

  • Grammar and spell checking
  • Quick fact lookups
  • Simple email drafts
  • Basic text summarisation

Daily usage estimate

Queries a day
3
Average input
500 tokens
Average output
300 tokens

Recommended models, per seat per month

  • GPT-6 Luna OpenAI$0.013
  • Claude Haiku 5.5 Anthropic$0.013
  • Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite Google$0.011
  • Llama 3.1 8B Meta$0.0015
  • DeepSeek V4.1 Flash DeepSeek$0.034

Cheapest Budget model: Llama 3.1 8B at $0.0015 per seat per month.

Casual

Budget tier · about 15 queries a day

per seat, per month

$3.63

Regular users who rely on AI daily for content creation, research assistance, and moderate-complexity tasks. Typically marketing, sales, or support team members.

15

15 seats · monthly total

$54.45

Use cases, usage and recommended models

Typical use cases

  • Blog post drafts and editing
  • Customer email responses
  • Research summaries
  • Social media content
  • Meeting note summaries

Daily usage estimate

Queries a day
15
Average input
1.5K tokens
Average output
800 tokens

Recommended models, per seat per month

  • Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite Google$0.81
  • GPT-5.4 Mini OpenAI$1.56
  • Mistral Small 4 Mistral AI$0.23
  • DeepSeek V4.1 Flash DeepSeek$0.47

Cheapest Budget model: Llama 3.1 8B at $0.020 per seat per month.

Daily

Standard tier · about 40 queries a day

per seat, per month

$24.64

Power users who depend on AI throughout their workday for complex writing, analysis, and decision support. Product managers, analysts, and senior marketers.

8

8 seats · monthly total

$197.12

Use cases, usage and recommended models

Typical use cases

  • Long-form report writing
  • Data analysis and interpretation
  • Competitive research
  • Proposal and pitch creation
  • Complex document review
  • Strategy brainstorming

Daily usage estimate

Queries a day
40
Average input
4K tokens
Average output
2K tokens

Recommended models, per seat per month

  • Claude Sonnet 5.5 Anthropic$24.64
  • GPT-6.1 Sol OpenAI$24.64
  • Gemini 3.8 Flash Google$9.24
  • Grok 4.20 xAI$8.80

Cheapest Standard model: Llama 3.3 70B at $0.92 per seat per month.

Advanced

Standard / Premium tier · about 80 queries a day

per seat, per month

$123.20

Heavy users who push AI to its limits with code generation, complex reasoning, multi-step workflows, and large document processing. Software engineers and data scientists.

5

5 seats · monthly total

$616.00

Use cases, usage and recommended models

Typical use cases

  • Code generation and review
  • Architecture design discussions
  • Complex debugging sessions
  • Technical documentation
  • Data pipeline design
  • API integration planning
  • Unit test generation

Daily usage estimate

Queries a day
80
Average input
10K tokens
Average output
5K tokens

Recommended models, per seat per month

  • Claude Sonnet 5.5 Anthropic$123.20
  • GPT-6.1 Sol OpenAI$123.20
  • Codestral Mistral AI$13.20
  • Grok 4.7 xAI$88.00

Cheapest Standard / Premium model: Llama 3.3 70B at $4.58 per seat per month.

Distinguished Engineer

Premium tier · about 120 queries a day

per seat, per month

$396.00

Elite users who require the most capable models for cutting-edge research, system design, complex reasoning chains, and enterprise-scale code generation. Staff+ engineers, researchers, and CTOs.

2

2 seats · monthly total

$792.00

Use cases, usage and recommended models

Typical use cases

  • System architecture design
  • Research paper analysis
  • Complex multi-step reasoning
  • Full-stack code generation
  • Security audit assistance
  • Performance optimisation
  • Cross-codebase refactoring
  • Technical leadership decisions

Daily usage estimate

Queries a day
120
Average input
25K tokens
Average output
10K tokens

Recommended models, per seat per month

  • Claude Opus 5.5 Anthropic$792.00
  • GPT-6 Astra OpenAI$1,980
  • Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview Google$448.80

Cheapest Premium model: Mistral Large 4 at $101.64 per seat per month.

Monthly cost summary

Total seats

40

Monthly on Claude Sonnet 5.5

$1,662

Average per seat

$41.56

Cheapest in each profile’s tier

$233.80

Monthly cost by seat profile
ProfileSeatsPer seatSubtotal
Basic10$0.26$2.64
Casual15$3.63$54.45
Daily8$24.64$197.12
Advanced5$123.20$616.00
Distinguished Engineer2$396.00$792.00
Total40$41.56 avg$1,662

▼ Save $1,428 a month by using the cheapest model in each profile’s recommended tier instead of Claude Sonnet 5.5 for everyone.

How the estimate works

Each profile has a typical number of queries a day and average input and output tokens per query. A seat's monthly cost is those tokens over 22 working days, priced at the chosen model's list price per million tokens. It covers API usage only: it leaves out tax, volume discounts and any per-seat subscription fee.

The profiles are illustrative averages, not measurements of your team. Change the seat counts to match yours, and use the calculator for a workload of your own.

Compare with subscriptions. This estimate prices the API. If your team would rather pay a monthly plan per person, see subscription plans and team seat prices for Claude, Claude Code, ChatGPT and Codex.

Next steps

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