aicost-cli

AI-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

Image, Video & Audio Models

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

• Code of Conduct
• Security Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Changelog

License

MIT — see LICENSE for details. Developed by Ufuk Aydın.