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Gov AI Benchmarks

Would you sign a travel contract without checking per diem rates?

Independent pricing benchmarks for government AI procurement. Know if you're getting a fair deal.

Monthly Per-Seat Benchmarks

What to pay, based on current market rates.

Light Use
$5-15
per seat/month
Occasional AI assistance, basic queries
Standard Use
$25-40
per seat/month
Daily productivity AI, document drafting
Heavy Use
$50-80
per seat/month
Power users, analysts, developers
Enterprise
$80-120
per seat/month
Full suite + advanced reasoning

Benchmark Rates by Use Case

Current market rates for common government AI workloads.

Basic AI

Summarization, extraction, simple Q&A, form processing
Gov Benchmark Rate $0.61/MTok
Typical Monthly (1000 queries) $5-15
Negotiation Guidance
Above $1.00: Push back. You're overpaying.
$0.50-1.00: Fair, but negotiate toward low end.
Below $0.50: Good deal. Ask about Year 2+ pricing.

Standard AI

General assistance, document drafting, analysis, translation
Gov Benchmark Rate $4.59/MTok
Typical Monthly (500 queries) $25-45
Negotiation Guidance
Above $7.00: Push back. You're overpaying.
$4.00-7.00: Fair range. Standard market rate.
Below $4.00: Good deal. Verify model quality.

Advanced AI

Complex reasoning, research, coding, technical writing
Gov Benchmark Rate $10.04/MTok
Typical Monthly (heavy use) $60-100
Negotiation Guidance
Above $15.00: Push back unless premium features justify.
$8.00-15.00: Fair for frontier models.
Below $8.00: Excellent. Lock in multi-year.

Reasoning AI

Multi-step judgment, decision support, policy analysis, complex problem-solving
Gov Benchmark Rate $7.92/MTok
Typical Monthly (moderate use) $40-80
Negotiation Guidance
Above $12.00: Premium pricing. Justify with benchmarks.
$6.00-12.00: Fair for reasoning-class models.
Below $6.00: Strong deal. Verify reasoning quality.

Note on "per million tokens": One million tokens ≈ 750,000 words. A typical government document query uses 2,000-5,000 tokens. At $5/MTok, that's about $0.01-0.025 per query.

Questions to Ask Vendors

  • What's your per-token or per-query pricing? (Not just per-seat)
  • What model(s) power the service? What's the Arena ELO?
  • Is pricing locked for the contract term, or variable?
  • What happens to pricing after Year 1?
  • Do you charge for failed queries or retries?
  • What's included in the "seat" vs. metered usage?
  • How do you handle data residency and FedRAMP?
  • Can we audit actual usage vs. billed usage?

Red Flags

  • Won't disclose which AI models power the service
  • Pricing significantly above market benchmarks
  • "Unlimited" plans with hidden fair-use clauses
  • Year 2+ pricing not disclosed upfront
  • No usage dashboard or audit capability
  • Requires multi-year without price protection
  • Charges for "AI processing" as separate line item
  • Can't explain per-token vs per-seat math

Price Reasonableness Worksheet

Print-ready form for documenting AI procurement price analysis. Includes rate tables, audit checklist, and certification block.

View Worksheet (PDF-ready)

Need Custom Analysis?

We provide custom benchmarking for government procurement teams.

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Based on aggregated market data from OpenRouter, LiteLLM, and pricepertoken.com