Cost Comparison

What running an instance costs

LinkedGrow separates the software from the AI, so nobody resells you model calls at a markup. On linkedgrow.ai you pay a plan price with the agent AI included, and the writing tools run on a key of your own. Run the software yourself and it costs nothing, because the self hosted edition is licensed under the AGPL-3.0, so a month is then the server bill, the AI your instance actually used, and one dedicated address behind each LinkedIn account. Nothing meters your generations either way.

What you actually pay

	Monthly price	AI for the agents	AI for your posts
LinkedGrow Pro	$59	Included	Your own key, $2-4
LinkedGrow Business	$89	Included	Your own key, $2-4

The comparison people usually want is against a lead generation stack rather than a writing tool. A prospecting tool, a data provider and a sequencer bought separately land well past $59 a month before anybody writes a message, and none of them post for you.

Against writing tools the difference is the cap. They bundle AI and meter it, and LinkedGrow does not meter the content side at all, because you are paying your own provider for exactly what you use and you pick the model.

On an instance you run yourself the 2 lines that actually move are the AI and the addresses. The AI follows how much your agents read and how much you write, under the ceilings that sit on the agent key. The addresses follow how many LinkedIn accounts you connect, because each one keeps an address of its own for good.

Cost breakdown by usage level

Here is what real world AI costs look like at different usage levels:

Light usage (10 posts per month)

Activity	Cost
10 post generations (GPT-5.4 mini)	$0.08
5 regenerations	$0.04
10 ideas generated	$0.02
Total AI cost	~$0.14

Regular usage (30 posts per month)

Activity	Cost
30 post generations (GPT-5.4 mini)	$0.24
15 regenerations	$0.12
30 ideas generated	$0.06
20 hooks generated	$0.04
Total AI cost	~$0.46

Heavy usage with images (100 posts + 30 images per month)

Activity	Cost
100 post generations (Gemini 3 Flash)	$0.60
50 regenerations	$0.30
50 ideas generated	$0.10
30 hooks generated	$0.06
30 images (Nano Banana 2 Lite)	$0.90
Total AI cost	~$1.96

Even heavy usage with image generation rarely exceeds $5 per month.

Model cost tiers

Budget models (under $0.005 per post)

• Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite - $0.001/post
• GPT-5.4 nano - $0.002/post
• GPT-5.6 Luna - $0.002/post
• Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite - $0.003/post
• Gemini 2.5 Flash - $0.004/post
• Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite - $0.004/post
• Sonar - $0.004/post

Value models (under $0.02 per post)

• Gemini 3 Flash - $0.006/post
• Grok 4.3 - $0.006/post
• Grok 4.20 Reasoning - $0.006/post
• Gemini 3.7 Flash - $0.007/post
• Gemini 3.6 Flash - $0.007/post
• GPT-5.4 mini - $0.008/post
• Kimi K2.6 - $0.008/post
• Kimi K2.7 Code - $0.008/post
• Claude Haiku 4.5 - $0.01/post
• Grok 4.5 - $0.013/post
• Grok 4.6 - $0.013/post
• Gemini 3.5 Flash - $0.017/post
• Gemini 2.5 Pro - $0.018/post

Premium models ($0.02+ per post)

• Gemini 3.1 Pro - $0.02/post
• Sonar Deep Research - $0.02/post
• Sonar Reasoning Pro - $0.02/post
• GPT-5.6 Terra - $0.02/post
• Claude Sonnet 5 - $0.02/post
• GPT-5.4 - $0.03/post
• Kimi K3 - $0.03/post
• Sonar Pro - $0.03/post
• Claude Sonnet 4.6 - $0.03/post
• GPT-5.6 Sol - $0.04/post
• Claude Opus 5 - $0.05/post
• Claude Opus 4.8 - $0.05/post
• GPT-5.5 - $0.06/post
• Claude Fable 5.1 - $0.10/post
• Claude Fable 5 - $0.10/post

A note on reasoning models

Most current models think before they answer, and providers bill those thinking tokens at the output rate. LinkedGrow sets the effort level to low on every provider that supports it, so the per post figures above reflect what you actually pay rather than an unconfigured worst case.

Monitoring your spending

Every AI provider offers a usage dashboard where you can:

• See real time spending
• Set monthly spending limits
• View usage by model and day
• Download invoices

Set a $10 monthly limit when you first start, and raise it later once you know what your instance really uses.