AI product gross margin by subscription price & token cost
Short answer: for a one-person AI SaaS, gross margin is set by the gap between your monthly price and the model-token cost of serving one user. Across this 64-cell sweep, 53 of 64 price/cost combinations stay gross-margin positive and 11 go underwater. A $29/mo plan on a $10/M output model lands at 68.3% margin; drop the price to $9/mo on a $30/M model and the same product runs at -168.8% — you lose money on every user. The full grid is below.
Gross margin % by price and output-token cost
Rows: monthly subscription price. Columns: model output cost per million tokens. Each cell is per-user gross margin %. Green ≥ 80%, grey 50–80%, amber 0–50%, red negative.
| Price \ $/M out | $0.6 | $2 | $5 | $10 | $15 | $30 | $60 | $75 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $9/mo | 76.2% | 64.6% | 39.6% | -2.1% | -43.8% | -168.8% | -418.8% | -543.8% |
| $19/mo | 88.7% | 83.2% | 71.4% | 51.6% | 31.9% | -27.3% | -145.7% | -204.9% |
| $29/mo | 92.6% | 89% | 81.2% | 68.3% | 55.4% | 16.6% | -61% | -99.8% |
| $49/mo | 95.6% | 93.5% | 88.9% | 81.2% | 73.6% | 50.6% | 4.7% | -18.2% |
| $79/mo | 97.3% | 96% | 93.1% | 88.4% | 83.6% | 69.4% | 40.9% | 26.7% |
| $99/mo | 97.8% | 96.8% | 94.5% | 90.7% | 86.9% | 75.6% | 52.8% | 41.5% |
| $149/mo | 98.6% | 97.9% | 96.3% | 93.8% | 91.3% | 83.8% | 68.7% | 61.1% |
| $199/mo | 98.9% | 98.4% | 97.3% | 95.4% | 93.5% | 87.8% | 76.5% | 70.9% |
Provenance
- Engine
- AI Product Margin Calculator (
ai-product-margin-calculator) - Source
- Computed live from
/engines/ai-product-margin-calculator.js - Grid
- 8 prices × 8 output costs = 64 cells
- Computed
- 2026-05-23
- Held constant
- 25 API calls/user/day · 500 input + 1,000 output tokens · $2.50/M input · $0.50 hosting · $0.25 other (per user/month)
Every value above and in the table is the deterministic return value of the shipped engine bundle, recomputed independently in continuous integration and diffed against this page on every build. The engine is pure (no clock, no randomness): the same inputs always produce the same output. No number on this page was hand-typed or estimated.
How to read this dataset
- Find your monthly price on the left, your model's output-token price across the top, and read the gross margin where they meet.
- Red cells are loss-making at the per-user level — the model cost alone exceeds your price. Raise price, cut tokens per call, or move to a cheaper model before scaling.
- The CSV adds API cost per user, total cost per user, and the dominant cost driver for every cell, so you can model your own blend.
Want to run your own inputs instead of this grid? Use the AI Product Margin Calculator. For the exact math, defaults, and what the model can't tell you, read the methodology page. For a worked rescue of a thin-margin product, see how we pulled a 39% margin back to healthy, and for the end-to-end stack view, margin vs. full stack cost.