How Much Does an Agentic Tool-Use Loop Cost per Month?
At production volume (25,000 calls/month), the cheapest effective option is Amazon Nova Micro at $27.38/month. The most expensive frontier option, GPT-5.4 Pro, runs $29,232/month — An agent task is not one call — it is a chain of several small round-trips (plan, call a tool, read the result, decide the next step), and the per-task cost is the sum of the whole chain.
How much does agentic tool loop cost per month?
At production volume (25,000 calls/month), the cheapest effective option for agentic tool loop is Amazon Nova Micro at $27.38 per month, verbosity-adjusted rather than list price. The most expensive frontier model, GPT-5.4 Pro, runs $29,232 per month for the same workload.
Token shape
| Shape | many small round-trips per completed task |
| Input / output tokens per call | 3K in / 0K out × 8 turns |
| Cacheable input | 70% |
| Batch-eligible | No |
"callsPerMonth" here counts completed tasks, each made of 8 model round-trips (plan → tool call → observe, repeated). Tool schemas and growing scratchpad context make most of each turn's input cacheable.
Volume
Ranked cost — Production volume
| Model | Provider | List monthly | Effective monthly | Verbosity | Rank Δ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Nova Microbudget | Amazon | $29.40 | $14.15 | 0.76× | — |
| Llama 3.1 8Bbudgetlegacy | Groq | $34.80 | $33.70 | 0.77× | — |
| Amazon Nova Litebudget | Amazon | $50.40 | $26.57 | 0.92× | — |
| GPT-5 Nanobudgetlegacy | OpenAI | $54.00 | $35.10 | — | — |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash Litebudgetlegacy | $84.00 | $46.20 | — | ▲1 | |
| GPT-OSS 20Bbudget | Groq | $63.00 | $97.74 | 2.93× | ▼1 |
| Ministral 8Bbudget | Mistral | $99.00 | $98.37 | 0.93× | — |
| Mistral Small 3.1budget | Mistral | $126 | $121 | 0.85× | ▲4 |
| GPT-4o Minibudgetlegacy | OpenAI | $126 | $69.30 | — | — |
| Grok-3 Minibudgetlegacy | xAI | $126 | $126 | — | — |
| DeepSeek V4 Flashbudget | DeepSeek | $101 | $74.76 | 2.60× | ▼3 |
| GPT-OSS 120Bbudget | Groq | $126 | $156 | 1.83× | ▼1 |
| Llama 4 Maverickbudgetlegacy | Groq | $156 | $156 | — | — |
| GPT-5.4 Nanobudgetlegacy | OpenAI | $195 | $104 | 0.79× | ▲1 |
| GPT-5.6 Lunabudget | OpenAI | $192 | $116 | — | ▼1 |
Show all 63 models
| Codestralbudget | Mistral | $234 | $223 | 0.79× | — |
| Gemini 3.1 Flash Litebudgetlegacy | $240 | $135 | 0.88× | ▲1 | |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash Litebudget | $240 | $146 | — | ▼1 | |
| GPT-5 Minibudgetlegacy | OpenAI | $270 | $176 | — | ▲1 |
| GPT-OSS 120B (Cerebras)budget | Cerebras | $255 | $315 | 2.33× | ▼1 |
| Gemini 2.5 Flashbudgetlegacy | $330 | $217 | — | ▲1 | |
| Mistral Medium 3budget | Mistral | $360 | $341 | 0.84× | ▲1 |
| Llama 3.3 70Bbudgetlegacy | Groq | $401 | $392 | 0.81× | ▲1 |
| DeepSeek V4 Probudget | DeepSeek | $313 | $269 | 3.31× | ▼3 |
| GLM-5.1midlegacy | Z.ai | $492 | $492 | — | — |
| Qwen 3.8 30Bmid | Groq | $540 | $540 | — | — |
| Qwen 3.6 27Bmidlegacy | Groq | $540 | $540 | — | — |
| Qwen 3.7 Plusmid | Qwen | $600 | $600 | — | — |
| Amazon Nova Promid | Amazon | $672 | $370 | — | — |
| GPT-5.4 Minimidlegacy | OpenAI | $720 | $437 | — | — |
| Gemini 3.1 Flashmidlegacy | $720 | $437 | — | — | |
| Claude Haiku 4.5mid | Anthropic | $900 | $522 | — | ▲1 |
| o3-Minimidlegacy | OpenAI | $924 | $508 | — | ▲1 |
| Grok 4.3mid | xAI | $900 | $963 | 1.42× | ▼2 |
| Qwen 3.8 Maxmid | Qwen | $1,344 | $1,344 | — | ▲1 |
| Qwen 3.7 Maxmid | Qwen | $1,344 | $1,344 | — | ▲1 |
| GPT-5midlegacy | OpenAI | $1,350 | $878 | — | ▲1 |
| Grok-3midlegacy | xAI | $1,440 | $1,440 | — | ▲1 |
| Gemini 3.6 Flashmid | $1,440 | $873 | — | ▲1 | |
| Gemini 3.5 Flashmidlegacy | $1,440 | $873 | — | ▲1 | |
| Grok-4.20 Reasoningmid | xAI | $1,560 | $1,560 | — | ▲2 |
| Grok-4.20mid | xAI | $1,560 | $1,560 | — | ▲2 |
| Mistral Large 3mid | Mistral | $1,560 | $1,560 | — | ▲2 |
| Gemini 3.1 Promid | $1,920 | $898 | 0.63× | ▲4 | |
| GPT-4.1midlegacy | OpenAI | $1,680 | $924 | — | ▲1 |
| GLM-5.2mid | Z.ai | $1,104 | $1,862 | 3.87× | ▼11 |
| GPT-5.6 Terramid | OpenAI | $1,920 | $1,164 | — | — |
| GPT-4omidlegacy | OpenAI | $2,100 | $1,155 | — | ▲1 |
| GPT-5.4midlegacy | OpenAI | $2,400 | $1,455 | — | ▲1 |
| GLM 4.7 (Cerebras)mid | Cerebras | $1,515 | $2,596 | 7.55× | ▼8 |
| Claude Sonnet 4.6mid | Anthropic | $2,700 | $1,566 | — | — |
| Claude Sonnet 4.5midlegacy | Anthropic | $2,700 | $1,566 | — | — |
| Claude Sonnet 4midlegacy | Anthropic | $2,700 | $1,566 | — | — |
| Claude Opus 4.8mid | Anthropic | $4,500 | $2,550 | 0.96× | — |
| Claude Opus 4.7midlegacy | Anthropic | $4,500 | $2,610 | — | — |
| Claude Opus 4.6midlegacy | Anthropic | $4,500 | $2,610 | — | — |
| Claude Opus 4.5midlegacy | Anthropic | $4,500 | $2,610 | — | — |
| GPT-5.6 Solfrontier | OpenAI | $4,800 | $2,910 | — | — |
| GPT-4 Turbofrontierlegacy | OpenAI | $7,800 | $4,020 | — | — |
| Claude Fable 5frontier | Anthropic | $9,000 | $5,220 | — | — |
| Claude Opus 4.1frontierlegacy | Anthropic | $13,500 | $7,830 | — | — |
| Claude Opus 4frontierlegacy | Anthropic | $13,500 | $7,830 | — | — |
| GPT-5.4 Profrontierlegacy | OpenAI | $28,800 | $17,892 | 1.04× | — |
Prompt caching assumes a 90% saving on the cacheable share of input — a stated modelling assumption, providers publish 75-90% off. See the full formula and coverage disclosure →