About AI Cost Lab
What AI Cost Lab does, where pricing comes from, and how estimates should be interpreted.
Purpose
AI Cost Lab is an independent decision-support tool for people estimating the cost of LLM APIs, agent workflows, cloud GPU usage, and local AI hardware. It is designed to make the cost assumptions visible instead of hiding them behind a single monthly number. The site is not affiliated with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, cloud GPU vendors, or other providers referenced in comparisons.
How pricing is maintained
Published model rates are stored with an official provider source URL and a verification date. The site generator refuses to publish a model entry without both fields, and a pricing verification step checks the configured official sources before deployment. A verified date means the source was checked on that date; it does not guarantee that a provider will never change pricing afterward.
How calculations work
Scenario estimates combine request volume, input tokens, output tokens, caching, users, agent multipliers, budget limits, and local-compute assumptions. Estimates deliberately separate known provider rates from user-entered assumptions. They are planning estimates rather than invoices or binding quotes.
Editorial and commercial independence
AI Cost Lab does not rank model quality from price alone. Direct partner links may be shown, but a link is identified as an affiliate only when a real affiliate relationship is configured. Advertising remains disabled until an approved advertising account is explicitly enabled. These rules are intended to keep cost comparisons useful even when monetization is present.