Distributed AI Economics Calculator

How This Calculator Works

This tool compares the total cost of running distributed AI workloads on public cloud versus Equinix infrastructure. Below is a summary of the key calculation logic.

Token Cost (Closed & Open Models)

Effective input tokens = input_tokens/day × scale × context_window_multiplier
Effective output tokens = output_tokens/day × scale × thinking_multiplier × context_window_multiplier
Monthly cost = (eff_input × input_price + eff_output × output_price) / 1M × 30 days
For Equinix with peering connectivity, a 10% discount is applied to token costs
Self-hosted open models have $0 token cost (compute covered by XPU)

Context Window Multipliers

Window	8K	16K	32K	64K	128K
Multiplier	1.0×	1.2×	1.5×	2.0×	3.0×

Thinking Mode Multipliers

Mode	Off	Light	Medium	Heavy
Multiplier	1.0×	1.5×	3.0×	6.0×

Infrastructure (XPU) Cost

Cloud = count × cloud_hourly_rate × 730 hours/month
Equinix Colo = count × equinix_colo_monthly rate
EMS = count × ems_monthly rate
If no Equinix Colo data exists, falls back to Cloud cost × 0.7
Infrastructure cost is multiplied by the number of compute locations

Storage Cost

Monthly cost = size × cost_per_unit_per_month (per vendor)
Equinix Colo and EMS costs are always shown for comparison
Storage cost is multiplied by the number of data locations

Data Movement (Network Egress)

Monthly transfer = daily_gb × 30 days
Internet cost = monthly_gb × internet egress rate (per provider)
Equinix Fabric cost = monthly_gb × fabric rate (typically much lower)
Network cost is multiplied by the number of data locations

Total Cost Summary

Cloud total = token_cost + (XPU × compute_locs) + (storage × data_locs) + (network × data_locs)
Equinix total = discounted_tokens + (colo_XPU × compute_locs) + (colo_storage × data_locs) + (fabric_network × data_locs)
Savings = Cloud total − Equinix total
Yearly = Monthly × 12 | 5-Year = Monthly × 60

Project Settings

Always Active

Project Name

Mode

Workload Infrastructure

Workload

Deployment Scale

Industry

Company

Owner

Owner's Email

Created Date

Location Multipliers

Cloud

Equinix

Remote

Compute Locations

Data Locations

Workload — Token Usage

Workload Mode

Closed Models

Model Name	Provider	Input Token/day	Scale	Output Token/day	Scale	Context Window	Thinking Mode	Connectivity	Est. $/mo

Open Models

Model Name	Hosting	Provider	Input Token/day	Scale	Output Token/day	Scale	Context Window	Thinking Mode	VRAMs (GB)	Connectivity	Est. $/mo

Infrastructure

Infrastructure Mode

Compute (XPU)

XPU	Number of	Total VRAM (GB)	Total Cost ($)	Cloud $/mo	Equinix Colo	EMS

Data

Always Active

Storage — PB

Size (PB)	Location	Vendor	Cloud $/mo	Equinix Colo	EMS

Storage — IO

Size (GB/mo)	Location	Vendor	Cloud $/mo	Equinix Colo	EMS

Data Movement

Default Connectivity: Applied to all locations unless overridden per row

Source Provider	Source Location	Dest Provider	Dest Location	Data Size (GB/day)	Connectivity	Internet $/mo	Equinix Fabric $/mo

Cost Estimation

Avg. Cloud Solution

Equinix

Cloud Breakdown

Token Cost

Data Movement Cost

Infrastructure

Storage

Equinix Breakdown

Token Cost

Data Movement Cost

Infrastructure

Storage