ECONOMICS
Nov 13, 2025
4 min read
Calculate Your LLM Cost Savings with TOON
Real pricing data and ROI calculations. See exactly how much money TOON saves on GPT-4, Claude, and Gemini.
Current LLM Pricing (2025)
| Model | Input | Output |
|---|---|---|
| GPT-4 Turbo | $0.01 / 1K | $0.03 / 1K |
| GPT-4o | $0.005 / 1K | $0.015 / 1K |
| Claude 3.5 Sonnet | $0.003 / 1K | $0.015 / 1K |
| Claude 3 Opus | $0.015 / 1K | $0.075 / 1K |
| Gemini 1.5 Pro | $0.00125 / 1K | $0.005 / 1K |
Note: Prices as of Nov 2025. Input tokens = data you send (context). Output tokens = model's response. RAG systems pay mostly for input tokens (your data).
Real-World Savings Calculator
Scenario 1: E-Commerce Chatbot
Setup
- • Volume: 10,000 customer queries/day
- • Context: 200 product records per query (RAG)
- • Model: GPT-4o ($0.005/1K input)
JSON Approach
Tokens per query:~8,500
Daily tokens:85M
Daily cost:$425
TOON Approach
Tokens per query:~3,600
Daily tokens:36M
Daily cost:$180
$245
saved per day
$7,350
saved per month
$89,425
saved per year
Scenario 2: Analytics Insights Platform
Setup
- • Volume: 500 analysis reports/day
- • Context: 5,000 event logs per report
- • Model: Claude 3.5 Sonnet ($0.003/1K input)
JSON Approach
Tokens per report:~210,000
Daily tokens:105M
Daily cost:$315
TOON Approach
Tokens per report:~85,000
Daily tokens:42.5M
Daily cost:$127.50
$187.50
saved per day
$5,625
saved per month
$68,438
saved per year
Scenario 3: Model Fine-Tuning
Setup
- • Dataset: 20,000 training examples
- • Epochs: 3 (60K total examples processed)
- • Model: GPT-4 fine-tuning ($0.008/1K)
JSON Format
Avg tokens/example:~1,200
Total tokens:72M
Training cost:$576
TOON Format
Avg tokens/example:~500
Total tokens:30M
Training cost:$240
$336 saved per training run
58% cost reduction + faster training time
ROI Timeline
Time to recover implementation cost (assuming 5 developer hours @ $100/hr = $500)
Small Project (100 queries/day)
Saves ~$5/day
~100 days
to break even
Medium Project (1K queries/day)
Saves ~$50/day
10 days
to break even
High Volume (10K+ queries/day)
Saves $200+/day
~2.5 days
to break even
Quick Cost Calculator
Estimate your savings:
Formula
Daily Savings = (Queries × Tokens × 0.55) × Price/1K Where: - Queries = your daily query volume - Tokens = avg tokens per query (JSON) - 0.55 = TOON's ~55% token reduction - Price/1K = your model's input pricing
Example Calculation
5,000 queries/day × 10,000 tokens × 0.55 × $0.01/1K = 5,000 × 10,000 × 0.0000055 = $275/day savings = $8,250/month = $100,375/year
Hidden Benefits
Beyond direct cost savings, TOON provides:
- ✓2.5x More Context: Fit more data in same window = better AI responses
- ✓Faster Responses: Fewer tokens = lower latency from API
- ✓Higher Rate Limits: Token-based rate limits stretch further
- ✓Better Accuracy: ~4% improvement in retrieval tasks (see benchmarks)