The cost of classifying or moderating content at scale with an LLM.
Labels are cheap to generate; the input is the cost. A small model plus a terse prompt handles most classification at a fraction of frontier pricing. Compare on the AI cost calculator.
Free AI classification cost calculator — items, tokens and model price to the cost of classifying or moderating at scale.
Cost per item = input tokens × input price + a tiny output (the label) × output price. Because the output is short, input drives the bill — keep prompts terse and use a small model.
Rarely. Classification and moderation are tasks where small models match large ones. Route them to the cheapest model that meets your accuracy bar, or a purpose-built classifier endpoint.