About AI-Cost-CLI
AI-Cost-CLI is a terminal calculator and recommendation tool for comparing AI API costs across providers and gateways. It includes text, image, video, and audio model pricing, currency conversion, and an MCP server for agent integrations.
Key features
- 01Calculate model API costs
- 02Compare direct and aggregator pricing
- 03Break down platform fees
- 04Convert prices to local currencies
- 05Refresh pricing from provider documentation
- 06Recommend models from text queries
Use cases
- 01Estimate token-based model spend
- 02Compare direct and OpenRouter costs
- 03Convert estimates to a local currency
- 04Find models matching cost and capability needs
MCP support
The `aicost mcp` command starts an MCP server for AI agent integrations. Its available tools are not detailed in the provided README.
Configuration
Local server config is the same for every client. Copy it into your client’s MCP config file.
Tools
Local servers expose tools only once running on your machine, and the maintainer has not provided a tool list.
Details
From the project READMEAI-Cost-CLI
A terminal-based calculator and recommendation engine for AI API costs. Supports multiple providers, local currency conversion, and automated pricing updates.
Preview: Direct vs. Aggregator Comparison
Compare the effective cost of using models directly vs. through gateways like OpenRouter, including platform fees.
Comparison: gpt-4o vs openrouter/gpt-4o
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Attribute ┃ gpt-4o ┃ openrouter/gpt-4o ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ Provider │ OpenAI │ OpenRouter │
├──────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────┤
│ Source │ Direct │ Aggregator │
├──────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────┤
│ Platform Fee │ 0.0% │ 5.5% │
├──────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────┤
│ Type │ text │ text │
├──────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────┤
│ Input Cost │ 111.4775 TRY (1M) │ 117.6088 TRY (1M) │
├──────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────┤
│ Output/Unit Cost │ 445.9100 TRY (1M) │ 470.4350 TRY (1M) │
└──────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────┘
Supported Models
Text Models
| Model | Provider | Input/1M | Output/1M | Tags |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 4.7 | Anthropic | $5.00 | $25.00 | reasoning, coding, vision, agentic |
| GPT-5.5 | OpenAI | $5.00 | $30.00 | multimodal, coding, agentic |
| GPT-5.5 Pro | OpenAI | $30.00 | $180.00 | precision, enterprise, agentic |
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Anthropic | $3.00 | $15.00 | coding, fast, general |
| GPT-4o | OpenAI | $2.50 | $10.00 | reasoning, coding, vision |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro | $2.00 | $12.00 | long-context, multimodal | |
| DeepSeek R1 | DeepSeek | $0.55 | $2.19 | reasoning, coding, smart |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash | $0.30 | $2.50 | fast, reasoning, legacy | |
| Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite | $0.25 | $1.50 | fast, cheap, agentic | |
| DeepSeek V3 | DeepSeek | $0.14 | $0.28 | general, coding, cheap |
Image, Video & Audio Models
| Model | Provider | Price | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Imagen 4 Fast | $0.02/image | Image | |
| GPT-Image-1 | OpenAI | $0.02/image | Image |
| DALL-E 3 | OpenAI | $0.04/image | Image |
| Imagen 4 Ultra | $0.06/image | Image | |
| Veo 3 Lite | $0.05/sec | Video | |
| Veo 3 | $0.40/sec | Video | |
| Lyria 3 Clip | $0.04/clip | Music | |
| Lyria 3 Pro | $0.08/song | Music | |
| Whisper | OpenAI | $0.006/min | Speech-to-Text |
| TTS Standard | OpenAI | $15/1M chars | Text-to-Speech |
Full list available via
aicost list --currency USD
Features
- Infrastructure Comparison: Compare Direct providers vs. Aggregators (OpenRouter) and Gateways (Portkey, LiteLLM, Martian).
- Transparent Commissions: Automatically calculates platform fees (e.g., OpenRouter's 5.5% credit fee).
- Direct Cost Calculation: Full breakdown of base costs and platform middle-layer fees.
- Currency Conversion: Real-time conversion to local currencies (TRY, EUR, etc.) with offline fallback.
- Automated Pricing: Weekly automated updates from official provider documentation.
- MCP Server: Native support for AI agents (Cursor, Claude Desktop).
Installation
pip install aicost-cli
With MCP server support:
pip install aicost-cli[mcp]
Or from source:
git clone https://github.com/ufhouck/aicost.git
cd aicost
pip install -e .
Usage
List All Models
aicost list --currency TRY
Calculate Cost
# Text model — token-based
aicost calc claude-opus-4.7 --input 1000000 --output 500000 --currency TRY
# With platform fee breakdown (aggregators)
aicost calc openrouter/gpt-4o --input 1000000 --output 500000 --currency TRY
Output Example:
╭───────── Cost Calculation ──────────╮
│ Model: openrouter/gpt-4o │
│ Source: Aggregator │
│ │
│ Base Cost: 316.9976 TRY │
│ Platform Fee (5.5%): 17.4349 TRY │
│ │
│ Total Cost: 334.4325 TRY │
╰─────────────────────────────────────╯
Compare Models
aicost compare claude-opus-4.7 gpt-5.5 --currency USD
Get Recommendations
aicost recommend "fast cheap coding" --currency USD
Sync Latest Pricing
aicost sync
MCP Server
Start the Model Context Protocol server for AI agent integration:
aicost mcp
Registries
- PyPI
- MCP Registry —
io.github.ufhouck/aicost-cli - Smithery.ai
- Skills.sh
Contributing
See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines on how to contribute, including pricing updates, bug reports, and code contributions.
Community
License
MIT — see LICENSE for details. Developed by Ufuk Aydın.
Comments
New to MCP?
From what the protocol is to installing your first server, these answers cover most first questions.
An open protocol that defines how AI applications connect to external tools and data in a uniform way. Clients talk to the model; MCP servers provide tools, resources and prompt templates. They exchange standard messages, so one server can be reused by many clients.