What does AI for SEO actually cost? 2026 price comparison
With AISA you use your own API keys and pay only what you consume: optimizing 1,000 items costs from $0.00 (GLM’s free Flash models) to $11.50 (Opus 5). The recommended default, Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, stays under a dollar. Below: the full table, 31 models across 9 providers.
Published: August 25, 2026 · Last updated: August 25, 2026 · Prices verified on August 25, 2026
How do you calculate the cost of one SEO generation?
Providers publish prices in dollars per million tokens, input and output separately. On its own that number tells you almost nothing: what matters is the cost of the work you actually do. So this comparison uses the real profile of an AISA One-Click optimization — roughly 800 input tokens (page content plus instructions) and 300 output tokens (title, meta description, focus keyphrase, AI Context) — multiplied by a thousand.
List price $ per million tokens
Useful for comparing models with each other, useless for budgeting: nobody can eyeball how many million tokens their own site consumes.
What you pay $ per 1,000 generations
The last column of the table: what it costs to optimize a thousand items. That’s the number to check before launching a batch.
The estimate excludes caching: on repetitive prompts, providers that offer prompt caching (DeepSeek leading, with cached input at a thirtieth of full price) come out even cheaper than this.
What does each model cost, one by one?
Sorted from cheapest to most expensive. Input and output are in dollars per million tokens; the last column tells you whether you can select that model inside AISA.
| Provider | Model | Input | Output | Vision | $ / 1,000 generations | In AISA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GLM | GLM 4.7 Flash · free | $0 | $0 | — | $0.00 | Yes |
| GLM | GLM 4.6V Flash · free | $0 | $0 | Yes | $0.00 | Yes |
| Qwen | Qwen 3.7 Flash | $0.03 | $0.13 | — | $0.06 | — |
| OpenAI | GPT-5 Nano | $0.05 | $0.40 | Yes | $0.16 | Yes |
| Mistral | Ministral 3 8B | $0.15 | $0.15 | — | $0.17 | — |
| GLM | GLM 4.7 FlashX | $0.07 | $0.40 | — | $0.18 | Yes |
| Gemini | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | $0.10 | $0.40 | Yes | $0.20 | Yes |
| Mistral | Mistral Small 4 | $0.15 | $0.60 | Yes | $0.30 | Yes |
| OpenAI | GPT-4o Mini (legacy) | $0.15 | $0.60 | Yes | $0.30 | Yes |
| DeepSeek | V4 Flash — fuori punta | $0.22 | $0.66 | — | $0.37 | Yes |
| GLM | GLM 4.5 Air | $0.20 | $1.10 | — | $0.49 | — |
| OpenAI | GPT-5.6 Luna | $0.20 | $1.20 | Yes | $0.52 | Yes |
| Gemini | Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite | $0.25 | $1.50 | Yes | $0.65 | — |
| DeepSeek | V4 Flash — in punta | $0.44 | $1.32 | — | $0.75 | Yes |
| Mistral | Mistral Large 3 | $0.50 | $1.50 | Yes | $0.85 | Yes |
| Gemini | Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite · default | $0.30 | $2.50 | Yes | $0.99 | Yes |
| DeepSeek | V4 Pro — fuori punta | $0.66 | $1.98 | — | $1.12 | Yes |
| GLM | GLM 4.7 | $0.60 | $2.20 | — | $1.14 | Yes |
| Gemini | Gemini 3.6 / 3.7 Flash · promo | $0.75 | $3.75 | Yes | $1.73 | Yes |
| Grok | Grok 4.3 | $1.25 | $2.50 | — | $1.75 | Yes |
| GLM | GLM 5 | $1.00 | $3.20 | — | $1.76 | Yes |
| DeepSeek | V4 Pro — in punta | $1.32 | $3.96 | — | $2.24 | Yes |
| Claude | Haiku 4.5 · default | $1.00 | $5.00 | Yes | $2.30 | Yes |
| Grok | Grok 4.6 | $2.00 | $6.00 | — | $3.40 | Yes |
| Qwen | Qwen 3.8 Max | $2.00 | $6.00 | — | $3.40 | — |
| Mistral | Mistral Medium 3.5 | $1.50 | $7.50 | — | $3.45 | Yes |
| Claude | Sonnet 5 | $2.00 | $10.00 | Yes | $4.60 | Yes |
| OpenAI | GPT-5.6 Terra | $2.00 | $12.00 | Yes | $5.20 | Yes |
| Claude | Sonnet 4.6 (legacy) | $3.00 | $15.00 | Yes | $6.90 | Yes |
| OpenAI | GPT-5.6 Sol | $4.00 | $20.00 | Yes | $9.20 | Yes |
| Claude | Opus 4.8 / Opus 5 | $5.00 | $25.00 | Yes | $11.50 | Yes |
Of the 31 models listed, 26 are selectable in AISA across the 8 supported providers: DeepSeek, GLM, Grok, Mistral, OpenAI, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity (the last one dedicated to real-citation research rather than batches). Qwen and a few minor variants are in the table purely as a yardstick.
List prices change often and without notice: this table is a snapshot taken on August 25, 2026, not a price commitment. Before an important batch, always re-check the provider’s official pricing page.
Which model is right for alt text?
Generating alt text and image titles requires a model with vision: 16 of the 31 listed have it. If you run a large media library — thousands of images — this is where the per-call cost decides between a few euros and a serious invoice.
GLM 4.6V Flash
Free vision: unbeatable for bulk alt text, with the caveats of tighter rate limits and a China-based provider — worth weighing if your content is confidential.
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite, GPT-5 Nano, DeepSeek Vision
The under-twenty-cents-per-thousand tier on text. DeepSeek just added vision at the price of its text Flash model: on large batches, that’s the most interesting development of the year.
Haiku 4.5 and Sonnet 5
Ten to twenty times the price of the first tier, but they describe images in noticeably finer detail. Worth it on your flagship product catalogue, not on twenty thousand archive photos.
An honest caveat. The “$ per 1,000 generations” column applies to text: don’t transfer it to images. Every provider counts image tokens differently (it depends on resolution and tiling), so the real cost of a thousand alt texts has to be measured on your own library, not inferred from the table. AISA reports actual consumption after every batch: that’s the number that counts.
Why does the time of day change DeepSeek’s price?
Because DeepSeek runs two price lists: during peak hours you pay double, during all other hours half. Peak hours are 01:00–04:00 and 06:00–10:00 UTC, Monday to Friday. Everything else — afternoons, evenings, nights and the entire weekend — is off-peak.
The working morning is the expensive slot
Exactly when it feels natural to sit down and work on your site, DeepSeek costs double: V4 Flash goes from $0.37 to $0.75 per thousand generations.
Afternoons and weekends are half price
The same batch launched after lunch, or on a Saturday, costs exactly half. On ten thousand items that’s $3.70 instead of $7.50 — for an identical result.
AISA runs in the background
Bulk optimizations run in the background: start them and close the browser. Scheduling the big batch off-peak is the easiest saving there is.
What does it cost on an actual website?
Three concrete cases, calculated from the table’s last column. “Recommended” is Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, the AISA default; next to it, the same job with the free model and with a top-tier one.
200 items
Recommended: $0.20. Free with GLM Flash. With Opus 5: $2.30. A whole blog optimized for less than a coffee.
2,000 products
Recommended: $1.98. With Haiku 4.5: $4.60. With DeepSeek Flash off-peak: $0.74.
10,000 items
Recommended: $9.90. With DeepSeek off-peak: $3.70. With Opus 5: $115. This is where model choice genuinely costs money.
These are API costs, paid directly to the provider with your own key: AISA adds no markup on top. If you’d rather not manage keys and top-ups, the Cloud plan includes the optimizations in the price.
So which model should you pick?
GLM 4.7 Flash
Free, no credit card: perfect for trying AISA on a small site and learning the workflow before spending anything.
DeepSeek V4 Flash, off-peak
Generous limits, no hard daily cap and half price outside peak hours: the sensible choice across thousands of pages or products.
Sonnet 5 or GPT-5.6 Terra
When the copy needs to land right the first time and you don’t want to re-read everything. Sonnet 5 is also that rare case of a newer model costing less than its predecessor: $4.60 against Sonnet 4.6’s $6.90.
Mistral Small 4
The only provider in the catalogue headquartered and hosted in the European Union, vision included at $0.30 per thousand generations: the simple answer when data must stay in the EU.
In AISA you switch models from a dropdown, provider by provider, and you can run one model for text and a different one for images. To see how all this fits into visibility on generative engines, start from What is GEO; to clean up the site you already have, SEO Doctor.
Your keys, your costs, no surprises
AISA doesn’t resell tokens: connect your API key and pay the provider at list price. You can even start for free.
AI SEO & GEO Assistant · Prices taken from the providers’ public price lists on August 25, 2026 and converted into cost per 1,000 generations using AISA’s One-Click profile (~800 input tokens, ~300 output). Third-party pricing can change without notice: always check the provider’s official pricing page before an important batch.