AI cost calculator: what does AI cost your company?
Work out the running cost of your AI, for all four RAGSuite plans. In the RAGSuite Engine you pay a fixed plan price with credits; self-hosted you pay for servers and the language model. All values are examples in euros that you adjust.
An estimate, not a quote · model prices as of September 2026
- Subscription / licence–
- AI usage–
- Embeddings–
- Infrastructure–
Calculate AI costs: your costs in detail.
Cost per month
| Subscription or licence– | – |
| AI usage (language model)questions × (context + answer) | – |
| Embeddings, ongoingchanged documents | – |
| Infrastructure– | – |
| Total per month | – |
| Total per year | – |
| Embeddings, one-timenot in the monthly total | – |
What happens when usage grows?
Fine-tune
Email me the result
Optional: we send you the result. Otherwise your answers only stay in your browser.
What does AI cost a company?
The cost of AI on your own data has four parts. Looking at them separately lets you lower them deliberately.
Subscription or licence
Community €0, RAGSuite Engine from €39 a month with credits, Enterprise by agreement.
Language model
Via API you pay per token for question, context and answer. A local model needs compute instead of tokens.
Embeddings
Once for all documents, then only for changed ones. Usually the smallest item.
Infrastructure
Self-hosted: your servers, with a GPU for a local model. Included in the RAGSuite Engine.
How the calculator handles the plans.
| Plan | Subscription / licence | AI usage | Infrastructure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Community | €0 (Apache 2.0) | by tokens with the model provider, or local | your servers |
| RAGSuite Engine Starter | €39 per month (yearly) or €45 (monthly) | 5,000 credits or your own API key | included |
| RAGSuite Engine Business | €169 per month (yearly) or €195 (monthly) | 25,000 credits or your own API key | included |
| RAGSuite Engine Premium | €399 per month (yearly) or €459 (monthly) | 65,000 credits or your own API key | included |
| Enterprise | fixed price by agreement | by tokens, or local | your servers or a dedicated instance |
Model prices are examples for large, medium and small models, converted at €1 = US$1.15 (reference rate September 2026). Enter your provider’s current prices. All prices plus VAT.
How to calculate AI costs.
Tokens from words: about 1.33 tokens per word. Embeddings one-time: documents × words × 1.33 × embedding price; ongoing only the share of changed documents. Language model: questions × (context × input price + answer × output price).
In the RAGSuite Engine you pay for AI usage with credits from your plan’s pool. With your own API key (BYOK) the plan price stays the same and no credits are used. The calculator shows your estimated usage.
How do you lower AI costs?
Choose a model per project
A small model is often enough for simple questions. In RAGSuite you set the model per project.
Run it locally
Self-hosted with a local model you pay no tokens, only your hardware.
Limit the context
Fewer but better-matching passages lower the input tokens.
Only re-ingest what changed
Embeddings then cost next to nothing.
Questions about AI costs.
What does AI cost a company per month?
That depends on the plan, users and usage. In RAGSuite Engine you pay a fixed plan price from €39 a month. Self-hosted, the Community Edition is free; you then pay for servers and the language model. The calculator shows both ways with your own numbers.
How is AI usage paid in the RAGSuite Engine?
With credits. Every plan includes a credit pool shared by all users in the workspace: 5,000 in Starter, 25,000 in Business, 65,000 in Premium. With your own API key (BYOK) you pay the same plan price but use no credits. The calculator estimates your usage.
Why is there no figure for Enterprise?
Enterprise has a fixed price by agreement, depending on users, way of running it and support. So for Enterprise the calculator only counts language model, embeddings and infrastructure and shows the licence as “on request”. You get a quote in a short conversation with our team.
How accurate is the estimate?
The estimate is as accurate as your assumptions. What matters most is the number of questions, context length and model price. The model prices are examples from September 2026: enter your provider’s current prices under “Fine-tune”. Nothing is stored, and you can change every value.
Is self-hosting cheaper than the cloud?
For small teams the cloud is usually cheaper, because servers, updates and backups fall away. With many users, existing hardware or a local model, running it yourself can be cheaper. Work out both ways with the same values and do not forget your team’s time.
Predictable AI costs: fixed plan price, no price per question.
Try the RAGSuite Engine free for 7 days, or let’s work out your team together.