Part 1 of 6
TOFU
What Does AI Really Cost? The Honest Cost Guide for Businesses
From €57/month for startups to €9,300/month for mid-market: All AI costs transparently broken down. With ROI formula and saving tips.
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AI Cost & Inference Economics
What running AI actually costs in 2026: token economics, inference efficiency, small models, tool consolidation and an ROI model that survives finance review.
What drives AI inference cost?
In short
AI inference cost is driven by token volume, model choice, context length and call frequency — not by a model's list price alone. The biggest lever is usually routing: small models for simple tasks, large ones for complex tasks, plus caching of recurring context. Measuring cost per result rather than per token quickly shows which use cases are economically viable.
For CMOs
For marketing the question is at what volume an AI workflow pays off versus current production - and which cost drivers need to be planned into the budget.
For CTOs
For engineering it is about token budget, caching, model routing and latency: the same feature can cost a multiple depending on the architecture.
The Learning Journey
Coming up in this series
Editorial roadmap — each card links to the article as soon as it goes live.
Why this hub?
- A cost model instead of gut feeling: license, token and operating cost kept separate
- Concrete efficiency levers: caching, model routing, context discipline, small models
- Spot tool sprawl and consolidate the stack properly
- ROI math with baseline and payback — recalculate it directly in our ROI calculator
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