Your content cost is a labour cost wearing an AI hat
Across almost every realistic configuration, model spend is under 10% of the blended cost per asset. Teams obsess over which model is cheapest per million tokens while paying an editor $55 an hour to fix its output. Cut editing minutes — with better briefs, style guides, examples in the prompt, and structured templates — and the number moves. Change models and it doesn't.
Volume without a quality gate is a liability
Publishing 1,000 AI pages is trivially cheap and increasingly counterproductive. Search engines demote scaled content abuse, and thin pages dilute the authority of the pages that actually rank. Model the scrap rate honestly and set a floor on QA minutes for anything in a YMYL topic.
- • Set a minimum human review time per asset and hold to it.
- • Fact-check anything with numbers, dates, names, or medical/financial claims.
- • Track which assets earn traffic; kill the formats that never do.
- • Reuse one strong asset across formats instead of generating five weak ones.
Where the saving is real
AI genuinely collapses cost on first drafts, outlines, format transposition (post → thread → script → email), localisation, and metadata. It saves the least on original reporting, expert opinion, and anything requiring accountability for the claim.
Related guides
Long-form playbooks on the same topic, written by the RevenueLab editorial team.
FAQ
What does an AI blog post actually cost?
Usually $40–$80 all-in for a properly edited 1,500-word post: about $1–$3 of model spend and 45–75 minutes of human editing and fact-checking at a loaded editor rate.
How much cheaper is AI content than human writers?
Typically 60–85% cheaper per asset once you include editing. The saving shrinks sharply for expert, technical, or regulated content where review time dominates.
Does using a cheaper model save meaningful money?
Rarely. Model spend is usually under 10% of blended cost per asset. Halving it saves 5%; halving your editing minutes saves 40%+.
Will AI content hurt my SEO?
Not inherently — search engines target scaled, unhelpful content rather than the tool used to make it. Thin, unedited, mass-produced pages are the risk. Edited, genuinely useful AI-assisted content ranks fine.
What's a realistic scrap rate?
10–20% for edited content, higher for experimental formats. Anything above 30% means the brief, not the model, is broken.
Should I include image and tool costs?
Yes. Stock, generated images, SEO tools, and your CMS are all cost of production. Excluding them produces a per-asset number that never matches the invoice at month end.
How this calculator is built
Independently maintained
Written by Sam Doshi and the RevenueLab editorial team. We don't sell the data feeds this tool is built on.
Sourced from primary data
Benchmarks come from public AdSense / Stripe / IRS disclosures and reader-submitted data — never third-party "$X per view" claims. Full methodology.
Last editorial review
Reviewed on a rolling quarterly cycle. Dated reviews are published on the methodology record for each calculator.
Editorial standards
See our editorial policy and disclaimer. Results are estimates, not advice.