AI Research Assistant Cost per Report

Question

How do I estimate AI research assistant cost per report?

Quick answer

Formula: cost_per_report = requests_per_report * cost_per_request

• Assumption: one report includes search, synthesis, and revision turns rather than one isolated prompt.
• Assumption: cost per request already includes retrieval, reranking, and any premium-model second pass.
• Assumption: requests per report should come from real completion traces, not one ideal path.

Example: 18 requests per report at $0.11 per request gives $1.98 per completed report.

What Counts as One Report

• Initial search or retrieval passes to gather source material.
• One or more synthesis turns that draft the brief.
• Revision turns that tighten citations, structure, or final recommendations.

Why Reranking Depth Compounds Fast

Research workflows touch broader corpora than support or docs assistants. If rerank depth grows from 12 documents to 30 documents on every search-heavy step, the cost lift can be material even before model output gets longer.

That does not mean reranking is bad. It means the report-level unit should include it explicitly, because better source selection can still be worth the extra spend when the final output is a paid research deliverable.

Related reads

• What Is Reranking in RAG?
• RAG Cost Components Explained
• Model Selection: Quality vs Unit Cost