—
per month—per user / month
—per year
—biggest line item
Your stack at different scales
Same services — watch fixed costs give way to per-user costs as you grow.
| Users | Total / month | Per user |
|---|
⚠️ Editable estimates. Per-user costs are typical blended figures (usage × reference list prices, June 2026) — your real numbers depend on plan tiers, free allowances, caching and how heavily each user hits each API. Tune every field to your product.
Why "cost per user" beats a flat monthly number
Early on, your bill is mostly fixed: hosting, a vector DB, a data subscription. Traffic is tiny, so per-user costs barely register. But as you grow, the per-user services — AI calls, SMS, maps, payments — scale linearly and quietly take over. The line item that was rounding error at 1k users can be your biggest bill at 100k. That flip is why a single monthly figure is misleading; the scale table above shows where your costs actually go as you grow.
Want to drill into one service? See the dedicated guides for OpenAI, Twilio, Stripe and the rest, model an AI feature on the AI app cost estimator, or price a support bot with the chatbot cost calculator.