For most people, pay-per-token is cheaper. A 27B to 31B uncensored fine-tune costs about $0.31 per 1M tokens on NanoGPT, or $0.46 per 1,000 short chats, so a $10 a month plan like Arli AI’s Starter only breaks even at about 21,800 short chats a month, roughly 700 a day. Long roleplay changes that: when every message re-sends 16,000 tokens of story, the break-even drops to about 2,000 messages a month. Before you subscribe, check what the plan caps, because most flat-rate plans limit context, model size or speed.
How to work out your break-even
Break-even chats per month = plan price ÷ cost per chat.
We count a short chat as 1,000 tokens in and 500 out, so cost per 1,000 chats = input price + half the output price (both per 1M tokens). In a long roleplay, each new message re-sends the whole conversation as input. We model that as 16,000 tokens in and 400 out, which is where a 16K context window fills up.
Here’s where a $10 a month plan breaks even against per-token prices as of October 2026:
| Model and host | Price per 1M (in / out) | Per 1,000 short chats | Break-even, short chats | Break-even, 16K messages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Llama 3 8B Lunaris, DeepInfra | $0.04 / $0.05 | $0.065 | about 154,000 | n/a (8K context) |
| GLM 4.7 Flash Heretic, Venice | $0.07 / $0.40 | $0.27 | about 37,000 | about 7,800 |
| Gemma 4 31B and Qwen 3.5 27B tunes, NanoGPT | $0.306 / $0.306 | $0.46 | about 21,800 | about 2,000 |
| Venice Uncensored 1.2, Venice | $0.20 / $0.90 | $0.65 | about 15,400 | about 2,800 |
| Llama 3.3 70B abliterated, NanoGPT | $0.70 / $0.70 | $1.05 | about 9,500 | about 870 |
| Hermes 4 405B, OpenRouter | $1 / $3 | $2.50 | 4,000 | about 580 |
For a $20 plan, double the numbers. The pattern: cheap small models almost never justify a subscription, and big models with long context reach it quickly. Prompt length matters more than message count.
What each flat-rate plan includes
“Unlimited” plans differ a lot in what they actually unlock. The cheapest tier of each:
| Provider | Cheapest plan | What you get | Limits to check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agnai | $5/mo (Patreon) | Roleplay fine-tunes, API on paid tiers | Most 70B models need a higher tier; tier contents aren’t spelled out |
| DreamGen | $7.83/mo | 375 credits a month plus 45 a day | 5,000-token context; no published credit-to-token rate |
| Infermatic | $9/mo | Curated models up to 72B, API | 1 request at a time, 12 a minute |
| Arli AI | $10/mo | Unlimited, models up to 31B | 16K context; 355B models need Core at $15, 128K needs Plus at $20 |
| NovelAI | $10/mo | Unlimited text on its standard models | Its two large models need Opus at $25; API terms require each generation to be started by a person |
| NanoGPT | $12/mo PRO | 60M input tokens a week | Only models included in the subscription; others bill per token |
| Venice.ai | $18/mo Pro | Pro chat | API credit only comes with Pro Plus ($68) and Max ($200) |
| Chub AI | $20/mo | Unlimited single-user access to its models | Paid in crypto only |
| Featherless | $25/mo Chat | Unlimited tokens across its catalog | 32K context; 4 concurrency units, and a big model can use all 4 |
Some “plans” are really prepaid credit. Electron Hub’s $10 Starter adds weekly credits billed per token. Uncensored.chat’s Basic is $9 for 1M tokens, web only, and its API plans work out to $6.90 per 1M tokens at $69 or $0.99 at $99. Featherless’s per-token Developer plan starts at $50 a month.
NanoGPT PRO is the easiest to compare: $12 buys about 39M input tokens at $0.306 per 1M, and PRO includes up to 60M a week. If the models you use are covered by the subscription, it wins well before a month is out. We don’t track which models are included.
Which one to pick
Choose pay-per-token if:
- you chat a few hundred times a month or less,
- you use small 8B to 24B models,
- you want to switch between many models and hosts.
Choose a subscription if:
- you run long roleplay sessions every day,
- you want 70B-class models with long context,
- you’d rather have a fixed bill than watch a balance.
Privacy differs too. Of the flat-rate providers, Venice scores 55 / 100 and Agnai 18 / 100 on our rubric. Cheap isn’t worth much if the policy doesn’t fit what you’re sending.
We haven’t measured whether flat-rate hosts serve the same quality as per-token ones; benchmarks are in preparation.
Look up any model’s per-token price across hosts on the Models page.