How would the price compare to SpaceX rockets?
Well, a couple of weeks ago there was news about Russians and Ukrainians fighting over Zenit launch costs, which also gave the costs for one Proton, so we know a Proton-M is roughly $45 million. (
forum link)
I would say a Soyuz should be cheaper than a Proton, so I'd go with less than §45 million. And then this is a stripped down version of a Soyuz, so...probably not more than $35 million, probably in the $2X range. Disclaimer: This is all guestimation from the Proton costs onwards.
Compared to a Falcon 9 v1.1 with $56.5 million but also 4 times the payload.
I think this launcher shouldn't be compared to SpaceX since they don't have any launcher in that payload range (Falcon 9 too big, Falcon 1 too tiny).
Valid comparisons would be Europe's Vega (~$40 million), India's PSLV (~$20 million), or the other small Russian launcher the Rokot (~$30 million).
In the end it boils down to the same: Russia, China, India can provide cheap launches due to cheap wages and cheap infrastructure while the US, Europe and Japan are more expensive, which they try to make up with reliability and their domestic partners.
