Moderation API Cost Ranking
Every model ranked by cost for a typical moderation workload: 10,000 items/day, 500 input / 100 output tokens per item.
Top Picks by Volume
Small Platform (under $10/month)
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite$0.50/mo
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite$0.66/mo
Mistral Small 4$0.66/mo
Growing Platform ($10-50/month)
DeepSeek V4 Flash$0.92/mo
GPT-4o mini$1.50/mo
GPT-oss 20B$1.05/mo
Enterprise (100K+ items/day)
Claude Haiku 4.5$15.00/mo
Gemini 2.5 Pro$11.25/mo
Claude Sonnet 4.6$75.00/mo
Strategy: Two-Stage Moderation Pipeline
Most platforms can save 80-95% by using a two-stage moderation pipeline: cheap auto-approve for obvious passes, LLM only for borderline content.
Two-Stage Pipeline (10K items/day)
Stage 1: Keyword + regex filter (free)$0/mo
Stage 2: 20% borderline → Gemini Flash$0.10/mo
Stage 3: 5% complex → Claude Haiku$0.75/mo
Total with pipeline$0.85/mo (vs $15 for all via Haiku)
This two-stage approach saves 94% compared to running everything through Claude Haiku. The key insight: most user content is clearly safe or clearly violating — only 5-20% needs nuanced AI judgment.
Moderation-Specific Considerations
- Free tier exists: OpenAI's Moderation API is free and covers hate, harassment, self-harm, and sexual content. Use it as a first pass before spending on LLMs.
- Latency matters for real-time: Chat moderation needs sub-200ms responses. Budget models (Flash, DeepSeek) are optimized for speed. Batch processing is 50%+ cheaper but adds latency.
- False positives are costly: Over-moderating (removing legitimate content) frustrates users. Test each model's precision/recall on your specific content before deploying.
- Custom policies need LLMs: Built-in moderation endpoints only cover standard categories. For brand safety, off-topic filtering, or custom community guidelines, you need a general-purpose LLM.
- Batch for non-real-time: If you can tolerate 1-5 minute delays (forum posts, reviews, listings), batch processing via async APIs saves 50%+ on moderation costs.
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