The Real Cost of AI Content Generation in 2026

Pricing transparency in AI SaaS is rare. Here's the honest math on what a fully-featured social AI tool actually costs to run per user.

Raw AI costs per post (industry-typical 2026 rates)

| Operation | Model class | Tokens | Cost | |---|---|---|---| | Topic research | Frontier fast LLM (grounded) | ~1,200 in, 400 out | $0.0008 | | Caption generation (× 4 platforms) | Frontier fast LLM | ~2,400 in, 800 out | $0.0016 | | Image generation | Premium image model | 1 image | $0.0400 | | Alt text | Small fast classifier | ~400 in, 60 out | $0.0001 | | Engagement score | Small fast classifier | ~600 in, 120 out | $0.0002 | | Total per post | | | ~$0.043 |

With a 100-post month: $4.30 of raw AI cost.

Where the remaining $25–$95 goes

A typical $30/month tier has about $25 of margin after raw AI. Here's what that covers:

• Infrastructure — Next.js hosting, Supabase, QStash scheduler, logging, monitoring (~$5/user)
• Platform APIs — Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, X all charge for API access at scale (~$3/user)
• Support & fraud abuse — accounts getting banned, duplicate payments, refunds (~$4/user)
• Sales + marketing payback — CAC for a $30 product is typically $60–$120 (~$5/user amortized)
• Product development — team salaries (~$8/user)

Leaves ~$0 to $5 of actual profit per user. Most AI SaaS runs at 50–70% gross margin and 5–15% net.

The pricing reality

• $0–$10/month tiers → vendor is either VC-subsidized, limited generations, or hiding the cost in data harvesting
• $20–$50/month tiers → realistic for a profitable AI SaaS
• $100+/month tiers → usually enterprise SSO/compliance, not more AI

What drives cost up

Three design choices 2–3x per-user cost:

1. Unbounded AI calls — no credit system, users burn through $50+ easily
2. Image generation with many retries — some tools generate 4 variants and let user pick; that's 4× image cost per post
3. Long prompts with no caching — sending the brand profile raw on every call instead of caching

GenZHook's prompt-cache + credit system + small classifier models for cheap signals keeps us in the profitable zone without squeezing the user.

The take-away for buyers

If a tool charges $10/month with unlimited AI generation, ask how. Usually the answer is "not sustainably."