LLM pricing · Compare

Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs o3 pricing (November 2026)

In short: o3 is 1.1× cheaper than Claude Sonnet 5.5 per chat message: $0.0062 vs $0.0070 for a typical chat turn (1,500 tokens in, 400 out). On a $9.99 plan, a user can send about 1,369 messages a month on o3 before they cost more than they pay, versus 1,213 on Claude Sonnet 5.5.

Price per million tokens

Claude Sonnet 5.5o3
ProviderAnthropicOpenAI
Input$2$2
Cached input$0.1$0.5
Output$10$8
Long promptssame ratesame rate

Cost per message and per user

Claude Sonnet 5.5o3
Per message$0.0070$0.0062
Per message, prompt 2/3 cached$0.0051$0.0047
Light user (30 msgs/mo)$0.210$0.186
Typical user (300 msgs/mo)$2.10$1.86
Heavy user (3,000 msgs/mo)$21.00$18.60
Break-even on $9.991,213 msgs/mo1,369 msgs/mo

Red: the user costs more in AI than the $8.49 you keep from a $9.99 plan after a 15% store fee.

Which to use

Price is only half of it: pick the cheapest model that gives answers your users accept. Many apps route most traffic to the cheaper model and send only hard requests, or only paying users, to the stronger one. Whatever the mix, the number that decides your margin is cost per user, because a few heavy users usually drive most of the bill.

Try your own numbers

Cost per message
$0.0062
AI cost per user / month
$1.86
Margin per user / month
$6.63
Break-even messages / month
1,369

List prices, standard tier, prompts under the long-context threshold. Averages hide your heaviest users: FiscaLLM shows this per real user.

Track the real cost of each user

FiscaLLM prices every Anthropic and OpenAI call with these rates, per user, and sets it next to what that user paid through RevenueCat, Stripe or a CSV. You see which users and which model lose you money. Free and open source. See the demo.

Questions

Is Claude Sonnet 5.5 or o3 cheaper?

o3 is 1.1× cheaper than Claude Sonnet 5.5 per chat message: $0.0062 vs $0.0070 for a 1,500-token prompt and a 400-token reply, at list prices.

How many messages can a $9.99 subscriber send on each?

About 1,213 a month on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and 1,369 on o3, before AI cost uses up what you keep after a 15% store fee.

Can I use both?

Yes. A common pattern is the cheaper model for most traffic and the stronger one for hard requests or paying users. Track cost per user to see whether the mix pays off.

List prices, standard tier. Batch, priority and regional pricing differ; check each provider for the latest.