Every cost-comparison post on the internet pretends every workload is the same. They aren't. A solo founder running an agent that does 5 million tokens a month is in a different universe from a 5-engineer team burning 100M, which is again a different universe from a production fleet doing 1 billion. The vendor that wins each tier is different, and pretending otherwise is how people end up overpaying by 4x or underprovisioning into a wall.
So here is the math, run honestly, across four archetype workloads. Prices verified against vendor pricing pages on 2026-05-22.
The pricing baseline
Per 1 million tokens, blended input/output (assume 70/30 split, which is the typical chat/agent ratio):
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 direct: $3 in / $15 out → ~$6.60 blended per 1M tokens.
- Claude Opus 4.6 direct: $15 in / $75 out → ~$33 blended per 1M tokens.
- OpenAI GPT-5.5 direct: $5.00 in / $30.00 out → ~$12.50 blended per 1M tokens (standard tier). Batch/Flex is 50% off.
- Cursor Pro: $20/mo flat, capped at ~225 fast premium reqs/mo (silently halved from ~500 in June 2025). Past the cap, "slow" requests are queued behind paying users. Overage on the new credit system has triggered public "$350 in a week" reports.
- OpenRouter PAYG: ~5.5% markup on the upstream rate, so Sonnet via OpenRouter is ~$6.96 blended per 1M. Accepts crypto via Coinbase Commerce.
- llmdeal Pro: $150/mo, 50M tokens included, $4 / 1M overage. Effective rate inside bundle: $3.00 / 1M. Effective rate including overage at 100M usage: $3.50 / 1M.
- llmdeal Elite: $200/mo, 100M tokens included, $3 / 1M overage. Effective rate inside bundle: $2.00 / 1M.
- llmdeal Scale: $1,999/mo, 1B tokens included. Effective rate inside bundle: $2.00 / 1M.
Where Cursor or ChatGPT cap requests instead of tokens, we converted using the conservative estimate of 4K tokens per "request" which is what an average chat exchange runs. Take this as approximate, not literal.
Workload 1: the light agent (5M tokens / month)
Who this is
A solo founder who runs a daily standup summariser, a customer-email drafter, and the occasional "rewrite this for me" prompt. Maybe a small agent doing inbox triage. Low volume, high value per request.
| Route | Monthly cost | Headroom | Friction |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT Plus ($20) | $20 | Plenty | OpenAI lock-in, KYC, card |
| Claude Pro ($20) | $20 | Hits 5-hour caps on heavy days | Anthropic lock-in, KYC, card |
| Claude Sonnet PAYG | $33 | Unlimited (PAYG) | KYC, card |
| OpenRouter PAYG | ~$35 | Unlimited | Crypto OK; KYC at higher tiers |
| llmdeal Hobbyist ($9) | $9 | ~3M included; overage applies | None |
| llmdeal Mix Pack ($49) | $49 | 25M included; 5x headroom | None |
Honest finding: at 5M tokens, the consumer subscriptions are competitive on price. ChatGPT Plus at $20 is genuinely the best value if you do not care about model lock-in or KYC. llmdeal's Hobbyist at $9 is cheaper but you will hit overage at this volume. If KYC and card are dealbreakers, llmdeal Hobbyist or Mix Pack is the right answer. If they are not, ChatGPT Plus is fine and we will not pretend otherwise.
Workload 2: the steady developer (30M tokens / month)
Who this is
A working engineer using AI for 4 to 6 hours a day. Code completions, refactors, stack-trace explanations, design discussions, doc generation. The "I use AI as a primary work tool" tier.
| Route | Monthly cost | Headroom | Friction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Max 5x ($100) | $100 | Hits weekly Opus throttle | Anthropic lock-in, KYC |
| Claude Max 20x ($200) | $200 | Still session-capped | Anthropic lock-in, KYC |
| Cursor Pro ($20) | $20 + slow-mode after ~225 reqs (or overage) | Hits cap mid-week | Cursor lock-in, KYC, overage risk |
| Claude Sonnet PAYG | $198 | Unlimited | KYC, card |
| OpenRouter PAYG (Sonnet) | $209 | Unlimited | Crypto OK; KYC at higher tiers |
| llmdeal Pro ($150) | $150 | 50M included; 67% headroom | None |
| llmdeal Elite ($200) | $200 | 100M included; 3.3x headroom | None |
Honest finding: at 30M tokens, llmdeal Pro is materially cheaper than the closest direct-API equivalent ($150 vs $198 for Sonnet PAYG) and removes the rate-limit hell of Claude Max. Cursor Pro at $20 looks tempting until you hit the post-Jun-2025 fast-request cap, at which point your effective tool is either "slow Cursor" (queued behind paying users) or an opaque credit-overage bill. Pro is the winner here.
Workload 3: heavy production (100M tokens / month)
Who this is
A small team (3 to 5 engineers) running production agents, customer-facing AI features, or a dev workflow where AI is in the inner loop of every PR. Or a single high-throughput user (the operator of this site, for example).
| Route | Monthly cost | Headroom | Friction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Sonnet PAYG | $660 | Unlimited | KYC, card, US-only |
| OpenRouter PAYG (Sonnet) | $696 | Unlimited | Crypto OK |
| Claude Max 20x x 3 seats | $600 | Still hits caps | Anthropic lock-in, KYC, 3 cards |
| Cursor Business 5 × $40 | $200 + per-seat overages | Per-seat fast caps | Cursor lock-in, contract, KYC |
| llmdeal Elite ($200) + 0 overage | $200 | 100M is exactly your budget | None |
| llmdeal Pro ($150) + 50M overage @ $4 | $350 | Predictable | None |
Honest finding: at 100M tokens, llmdeal Elite at $200 is the lowest-cost route by a margin of 3 to 4x against direct-API rates, and it eliminates the per-seat math that breaks team subscriptions. Add the Frontier Credits add-on at $89/mo if you still want Claude/GPT for the hard 10 percent of prompts, total $289. Cursor Business at $200 for 5 seats looks competitive on sticker but the fast-request cap is per-seat, not pooled, so a single heavy user blows the team's budget while others sit unused.
Workload 4: production fleet (1 billion tokens / month)
Who this is
A real production AI product. A customer-support bot serving a million users. A code-review agent on a 200-engineer org. The "we have a procurement department" tier.
| Route | Monthly cost | Headroom | Friction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Sonnet PAYG | $6,600 | Unlimited (rate limits apply) | KYC, card, US-only, enterprise contract recommended |
| OpenAI GPT-5.5 PAYG (standard) | $12,500 | Unlimited (rate limits apply) | KYC, card, US-only |
| OpenRouter PAYG (Sonnet) | $6,960 | Unlimited | Crypto OK; enterprise tier needed |
| llmdeal Scale ($1,999) | $1,999 | 1B included | None |
| llmdeal GLM-5.1 Dedicated ($5,999) | $5,999 | Single-tenant H100, unlimited | None; EEA-resident DPA available |
Honest finding: at 1B tokens, llmdeal Scale at $1,999 is between a 50 percent and 70 percent cost cut versus the direct APIs, with zero KYC and zero rate-limit risk. If you need single-tenant H100s for compliance or latency reasons, GLM-5.1 Dedicated at $5,999 is still cheaper than Claude direct at this volume and you get an EEA-resident DPA before the first token leaves your code.
The summary table
| Workload | Best route | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| 5M tokens (light) | ChatGPT Plus or llmdeal Hobbyist | $9 to $20 |
| 30M tokens (steady dev) | llmdeal Pro | $150 |
| 100M tokens (heavy prod) | llmdeal Elite | $200 |
| 1B tokens (fleet) | llmdeal Scale | $1,999 |
The thing the cost table does not show
llmdeal wins on cost at every workload above 10M tokens. That is the easy part of the case. The harder part to put a number on is what the table cannot show: no KYC, crypto payment, BYO keys, cancel by not renewing, EU or US routing as a toggle, and an OpenAI-compatible endpoint that drops into any SDK you already use.
For some teams those things are nice-to-haves. For other teams they are the actual reason to switch and the cost savings are a bonus. If your work touches a regulator, an NDA, or a customer who would be uncomfortable seeing their data routed through a US discovery surface, the no-KYC and EU-resident routing are not nice-to-haves, they are the product.
How to pick
Open the dashboard for whichever AI tool you currently use. Find the usage page. Get your last 30 days of token consumption. Then look up the row in the summary table.
- Under 5M tokens a month: stay where you are unless KYC bothers you.
- 10M to 50M tokens: llmdeal Pro at $150 is your number.
- 50M to 150M tokens: llmdeal Elite at $200, or Pro plus the Frontier Credits add-on if you want Claude on the hard prompts.
- 500M plus tokens: Scale at $1,999, or GLM-5.1 Dedicated if you need single-tenant.
The Free Trial gives you 200K tokens to verify the math against your own usage before you spend a dollar.
See pricing →Companion posts: the migration guide from Cursor and OpenAI, and the explanation of BYO keys and smart routing.