AI Article Summarizer Cost — 100k Articles/Month
Summarizing 100k articles per month runs $40–$400 depending on model choice and batch usage.
Scenario
A news aggregator or content tool produces TL;DR summaries for 100,000 articles per month. Each article averages 3,000 input tokens; the model returns a 200-token summary. The work runs as an offline pipeline, so batch APIs (50% discount on supported providers) are usable. Cache hit is low because each article is unique, though shared formatting instructions cache modestly.
| Assumption | Value |
|---|---|
| Articles / month | 100,000 |
| Input / article | ~3,000 tokens |
| Summary length | ~200 tokens |
| Cache hit | 20% (instruction template) |
| Latency | Not critical (async pipeline) |
Apply batch API discount (typically 50%) manually for OpenAI/Anthropic/Google. The numbers below show on-demand pricing.
Monthly cost across recommended models
Calculated at 300M input tokens + 20.0M output tokens, with 20% prompt cache hit rate.
| Model | Input cost | Output cost | Cache savings | Total / mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deepseek Chat Cheapest | $84.00 | $8.40 | −$15.12 | $77.28 |
| Gpt 5 Mini | $75.00 | $40.00 | −$13.50 | $102 |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash | $90.00 | $50.00 | −$16.20 | $124 |
| Claude Haiku 4 5 | $300 | $100 | −$54.00 | $346 |
💡 Switching from Claude Haiku 4 5 to Deepseek Chat saves $269/month (78% reduction).
Why these models
Summarization is input-heavy and quality-tolerant — small mid-tier models beat frontier models on cost/quality ratio. Claude Haiku 4.5 leads on prompt caching efficiency. Gemini 2.5 Flash handles longer articles (1M context). DeepSeek is the absolute cheapest if compliance allows.
Key insights
- 1. Token cost is 90%+ input — choose models with cheap input rates, not the lowest output rates.
- 2. For news / blog content (under 8k tokens), all 4 recommended models work; pick on price alone.
- 3. For long-form (research papers, transcripts >50k tokens), Gemini Flash is the only viable choice — others truncate.
- 4. Set a strict output budget (max 300 tokens). Without it, models occasionally return verbose summaries that 5× the bill.
Cost at different scales
| Scale | Deepseek Chat | Gpt 5 Mini | Gemini 2.5 Flash | Claude Haiku 4 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small site (10k articles) | $7.73 | $10.15 | $12.38 | $34.60 |
| Baseline (100k articles) | $77.28 | $102 | $124 | $346 |
| Major publisher (1M articles) | $773 | $1015 | $1238 | $3460 |
| Index-scale (10M articles) | $7728 | $10.2k | $12.4k | $34.6k |
Try your own scenario
The numbers above use our best-guess assumptions. For your actual workflow, use the interactive calculator to plug in your real token volumes and quality requirements.
All cost figures are estimates based on publicly-listed pricing as of the data refresh date. Verify with the provider's official pricing page before making business decisions. Embedding costs, vector database costs, and infrastructure costs are not included unless explicitly noted.