Pricing Tiers

Cortex uses a tier-based pricing model designed to be affordable for students while covering AI and infrastructure costs.

Plans

Feature	Free	Student ($5/mo)	Pro ($12/mo)	Power ($30/mo)
Queries/month	50	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Sonnet queries	0	20	100	Unlimited
Voice responses	0	15	60	200
Default model	Haiku 4.5	Haiku 4.5	Haiku 4.5	Haiku 4.5
Max tokens/response	400	600	800	1,200
Notes	100	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Spaced repetition	Basic	Full	Full	Full

How Costs Break Down

AI Queries (Anthropic)

Model	Input Cost	Output Cost	Avg Query Cost
Haiku 4.5	$1/MTok	$5/MTok	~$0.005
Sonnet 4	$3/MTok	$15/MTok	~$0.02

Most queries use Haiku by default. Sonnet is auto-selected only for complex operations (synthesis, comparison, analysis).

Voice Responses (ElevenLabs)

Plan	Cost per 1K characters	Avg response cost
Flash	$0.08/1K chars	~$0.04/response
Turbo	$0.11/1K chars	~$0.055/response

Voice is optional. Text responses are always available on all tiers.

Smart Model Routing

Cortex automatically selects the right model for each query:


# Queries auto-escalated to Sonnet:
COMPLEX_KEYWORDS = [
    "synthesize", "compare", "analyze", "debate",
    "contrast", "evaluate", "summarize all"
]
 
# Everything else uses Haiku

You don’t need to choose — the system detects complexity and routes appropriately.

Checking Your Usage


curl -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
  https://api.cortex-app.dev/api/quota


{
  "tier": "student",
  "queries_used": 142,
  "queries_limit": -1,
  "sonnet_queries_used": 8,
  "sonnet_queries_limit": 20,
  "voice_used": 3,
  "voice_limit": 15,
  "resets_at": "2025-04-01T00:00:00Z"
}

Quotas reset on the 1st of each month.