A worked estimate you can check line by line. Change the numbers to your own in the cost calculator.
What we assume
A 40-page document (about 30,000 tokens) with 500 tokens of instructions, summarized into about 1,000 tokens.
Cost per document
| Model | No caching | With caching | Caching + Batch API | Per 1,000 documents, with caching |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Fable 5.2 | $0.284 | $0.280 | $0.140 | $280 |
| Claude Opus 5.5 | $0.142 | $0.140 | $0.070 | $140 |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | $0.071 | $0.070 | $0.035 | $70.05 |
| Claude Haiku 5.5 | $0.0036 | $0.0035 | $0.0018 | $3.50 |
Cost per month
| Model | 1,000 documents/month | 50,000 documents/month |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.2 | $140 | $7,002 |
| Opus 5.5 | $70.05 | $3,503 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $35.02 | $1,751 |
| Haiku 5.5 | $1.75 | $87.63 |
Where the money goes
- Nothing repeats between documents except the short instructions, so caching barely helps here. The Batch API does: it halves the price when results can wait.
- Input tokens dominate. Strip boilerplate, headers and repeated footers before sending.
- For very long documents, check whether the model has a higher price above a prompt-length threshold.
To check what a plan price leaves you after these costs, use the AI SaaS margin calculator. To see how much caching saves on your own prompt sizes, use the prompt caching savings calculator.
Questions
How much does one document cost with the Claude API?
With prompt caching, from about $0.0035 on Claude Haiku 5.5 to about $0.280 on Claude Fable 5.2, for a document of 500 reused + 30,000 new input tokens, 1,000 output tokens. Without caching it is $0.0036 to $0.284.
How much does it cost per month?
1,000 documents/month: about $1.75 on Haiku 5.5 up to $140 on Fable 5.2. 50,000 documents/month: about $87.63 on Haiku 5.5 up to $7,002 on Fable 5.2, using the Batch API, with caching.
How can I make it cheaper?
Nothing repeats between documents except the short instructions, so caching barely helps here. The Batch API does: it halves the price when results can wait.