How to price an AI SaaS product

Guide · sources linked inline · 2026-10-26

1. Measure usage. Average calls per active user per day and tokens per call, from real logs.
2. Compute cost per user. Calls × 30 × cost per call. Our unit economics calculator does this for every model.
3. Pick a target gross margin. Many SaaS businesses aim for 70–80%. Minimum price = cost per user ÷ (1 − margin).
4. Protect the tail. Heavy users can cost 10× the average. Use usage caps, fair-use limits, or credit-based pricing.
5. Lower cost, not just raise price. Route easy requests to a cheaper model, cache repeated prefixes, and batch background jobs.

Worked example

1,000 users × 5 calls/day × 30 days = 150,000 calls. With GPT-5.4 mini at 10K input / 1K output tokens per call, that is $0.012 per call, $1,800 per month and $1.80 per user; at an 80% margin you need at least $9.00 per user per month.

Next step → Run your own numbers

Prices last checked 2026-10-26 against official sources · how we verify