An LLM call replaces work a person would do. Price every model at your real workload, value the time it offsets, and see which models pay for themselves — and when none do.
An LLM call replaces work a person would otherwise do. Put a dollar value on that work, compare it to the API cost, and you get ROI.
API cost is computed by the same engine as the calculator from each model's per-token price — never quoted from memory. The cheapest model we track for a typical chatbot workload is DeepSeek V4 Flash at about $17.19/mo.
Each row prices every one of our 28 models at the workload and shows the cheapest, with the value of the human time it offsets. Saved-time and rate are editorial assumptions — change them in the calculator below.
| Scenario | API cost | Time offset | Work value | Net savings/mo | Return | Break-even |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Support replies — 10k tickets/mo | $1.9/mo Ministral 3 (3B) | 1,000 hrs | $28,000 | $27,998 | 1,000×+ | <1/mo |
| Content drafts — 2k pieces/mo | $0.42/mo Ministral 3 (3B) | 667 hrs | $23,333 | $23,333 | 1,000×+ | <1/mo |
| Doc classification — 100k docs/mo | $6.6/mo Ministral 3 (3B) | 1,667 hrs | $46,667 | $46,660 | 1,000×+ | ~14/mo |
Cheapest model per scenario, no caching assumed (caching only lowers cost further). "Return" = value ÷ API cost. A long, clean, high-volume task is where LLM ROI is strongest.
Set your task and what an hour of the work it replaces is worth. We price all 28 models and rank them by ROI — so you see which model has which return and how much each saves.
Honesty is a feature. The ROI math turns negative here:
| Situation | Why ROI suffers | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| One-off or tiny volume | Engineering and prompt-tuning time dwarfs the saved minutes when you run it a handful of times. | Skip |
| Zero error tolerance | If every output needs a human to verify, you've shifted work, not removed it — and added latency and token cost on top. | Risky |
| The work is already cheap | If a person does the task in seconds for near-zero cost, the API bill plus oversight rarely beats it. | Marginal |
| High volume, clear task, tolerant of small error | Cost per task is cents, the offset is real minutes — ROI scales with volume. | Strong ROI |