I analyzed 4,200 views on my AI cost calculator. Here is the 'Retry Tax' data founders actually care about.

After 3 days of debating AI margins on Reddit, one thing is clear: raw token pricing is dead.

The Data:

Most founders are seeing a 2.4x to 3x 'Retry Tax' on DeepSeek V3.2 for complex tasks. Context Caching is the only reason flagship models stay competitive in long sessions. Batch Mode (50% off) is being ignored by 70% of devs, even for non-latency tasks.

I built a simulator to map this out for my own SaaS. If anyone is struggling with LLM margins and wants to see the math, check it out here: https://bytecalculators.com/deepseek-ai-token-cost-calculator

Would love to hear if your production logs match these multipliers!