← Back to Free Tools
Free Tool — RAG Systems

RAG Pipeline Cost
Calculator

Enter your document corpus, query volume, and current solution. Get build cost, monthly ops, break-even point, and a 36-month cost comparison — based on verified 2026 infrastructure pricing.

Step 1 Your Document Corpus
10,000
Count all documents that will be searchable — contracts, policies, reports, emails, knowledge base articles.
Longer documents require more chunks and more storage.
Frequent updates mean recurring embedding and re-indexing costs.
Step 2 Query Volume
500
Include all users — employees, customers, agents. 500/day = ~20 concurrent users in a business day.
Complexity affects context window size and LLM inference cost per query.
Step 3 Embedding Model
Step 4 Vector Database
Step 5 LLM for Generation
$
Include all tools — SharePoint search licenses, vendor RAG platforms, manual research labor cost.

Your RAG cost projection is ready.

Enter your work email to see your full breakdown — build cost, monthly ops, break-even, and 36-month comparison. Report delivered to your inbox within 60 seconds.

No spam. No forced sales call. Unsubscribe any time.
One-Time Build Cost
Architecture + development
Monthly Operating Cost
Infra + embeddings + LLM
Break-Even vs Current
Months until positive ROI
Architecture Recommendation
One-Time Build Cost Breakdown
Data cleaning & preprocessing30–50% of project cost — formatting, deduplication, quality checks
Custom chunking strategyDocument-type-aware chunking logic ($2K–$5K market range)
Initial corpus embeddingOne-time cost to embed all documents
Hybrid search implementationVector + BM25 keyword, re-ranking layer ($1.5K–$3K)
Metadata filtering & schema designFilter by date, department, document type ($1K–$2.5K)
Prompt engineering & iteration15–30 hours of expert time at $120/hr
Testing, evaluation & quality assurance
Total Build Investment
Monthly Operating Cost Breakdown
Vector database
Query embedding (monthly queries × tokens)
LLM inference (generation per query)
Re-indexing (corpus updates)Recurring embedding cost for new/changed documents
Monitoring & observability
Total Monthly Operating Cost
36-Month Cumulative Cost Comparison
RAG pipeline (includes build cost)
Current approach
Methodology: Embedding costs: OpenAI API pricing April 2026 ($0.02/M tokens small, $0.13/M tokens large). Voyage AI: $0.06/M tokens (Dec 2025 benchmark data). Vector DB: Pinecone April 2026 published pricing (Standard $50/month min, Enterprise $500/month min, storage $0.33/GB). Weaviate Flex $50/month min. Qdrant cloud $25–$70/month. LLM inference: Claude and OpenAI API pricing April 2026. Build cost ranges from Stratagem Systems 2026 RAG cost analysis and Appinventiv 2026 RAG development cost guide. Chunking, hybrid search, metadata costs from published implementation benchmarks. Results are estimates — actual costs vary by data quality, query patterns, and team efficiency.

60% of enterprise RAG pilots fail silently.

A RERIGHT RAG assessment identifies your architecture gaps before you build the wrong system. $2,000. 5 business days. Specific to your document types and query patterns.

Book a RAG Assessment — $2,000 →
Data sources: OpenAI Embeddings API pricing April 2026 (costgoat.com verified). Voyage AI benchmark data December 2025 (MTEB leaderboard, introl.com RAG infrastructure guide). Pinecone pricing April 2026 (costbench.com, AWS Marketplace, Pinecone docs). Weaviate Cloud pricing 2026. Qdrant cloud pricing 2026. Build cost ranges: Stratagem Systems RAG Implementation Cost 2026, Appinventiv RAG Application Development guide 2026, Zilliz RAG cost calculator methodology. LLM pricing: Anthropic and OpenAI API pricing pages April 2026.