RE:CZ

Cost Analysis of Claude Opus Relay Services

AI Cost Analysis

👤 AI developers, researchers, tech enthusiasts interested in AI costs
This article documents the author's experience on February 2, 2026, in resolving a Claude Opus model Quota exhaustion issue, discovering through the use of relay services that costs are far lower than official quotes. It details a comparison between Anthropic's official pricing and relay service providers (calculated per 1M Tokens): official input cost is 35 CNY, output is 175 CNY, while relay service providers charge 0.189 CNY and 0.947 CNY respectively, a gap of about 185 times. The author infers that Anthropic's actual costs are even lower, with a gross margin potentially exceeding 99.46%, far surpassing competitors like DeepSeek. The article notes that relay services pose privacy risks but are cost-effective for non-sensitive tasks (e.g., open-source projects, learning research), and expresses amazement at the pricing madness in the AI industry.
  • ✨ Claude Opus model Quota exhaustion issue resolved via relay services
  • ✨ Relay service costs are lower than DeepSeek, about 1/185 of official quotes
  • ✨ Anthropic official input cost: 35 CNY, output: 175 CNY (per 1M Tokens)
  • ✨ Relay service provider input cost: 0.189 CNY, output: 0.947 CNY (per 1M Tokens)
  • ✨ Anthropic's estimated gross margin exceeds 99.46%
📅 2026-02-02 · 352 words · ~2 min read
  • Claude Opus
  • AI costs
  • relay services
  • Anthropic
  • gross margin
  • DeepSeek
  • pricing comparison