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> If you are a heavy user, you should use pay-as-you go pricing if you’re a heavy user you should pay for a monthly subscription for Claude Code which is signi

by pmxi 1y ago

> If you are a heavy user, you should use pay-as-you go pricing if you’re a heavy user you should pay for a monthly subscription for Claude Code which is significantly cheaper than API costs.

ramesh31 1y ago
Am I alone in spending $1k+/month on tokens? It feels like the most useful dollars i've ever spent in my life. The software I've been able to build on a whim over the last 6 months is beyond my wildest dreams from a a year or two ago.
- zppln 1y ago
  Care to show what you've built?
- fainpul 1y ago
  > The software I've been able to build on a whim over the last 6 months is beyond my wildest dreams from a a year or two ago. If you don't mind sharing, I'm really curious - what kind of things do you build and what is your skillset?
  - stillsut 1y ago
    Not OP but I know it can be difficult to really difficult to measure or communicate this to people who aren't familiar with the codebase or the problem being solved. Other than just dumping 10M tokens of chats into a gist and say read through everything I said back and forth with claude for a week. But, I think I've got the start of a useful summary format: it that takes every prompt and points to the corresponding code commit produced by ai + adds a line diff amount and summary of the task. Check it out below. https://github.com/sutt/agro/blob/master/docs/dev-summary-v1.md#v017 https://github.com/sutt/agro/blob/master/docs/dev-summary-v1... (In this case it's an python cli ai-coding framework that I'm using to build the package itself)
- tovej 1y ago
  I would personally never. Do I want to spend all my time reviewing AI code instead of writing? Not really. I also don't like having a worse mental model of the software. What kind of software are you building that you couldn't before?
- kergonath 1y ago
  > Am I alone in spending $1k+/month on tokens? I would if there were any positive ROI for these $12k/year, or if it were a small enough fraction of my income. For me, neither are true, so I don’t :). Like the siblings I would be interested in having your perspective on what kind of thing you do with so many tokens.
  - mewpmewp2 1y ago
    If freelancing and if I am doing 2x as much as previously with same time, it would make sense that I am able to make 2x as much. But honestly to me with many projects I feel like I was able to scale my output far more than 2x. It is a different story of course if you have main job only. But I have been doing main job and freelancing on the side forever now. I do freelancing mostly for fun though, picking projects I like, not directly for the money, but this is where I definitely see multiples of difference on what you can charge.
- OtherShrezzing 1y ago
  I’m unclear how you’re hitting $1k/mo in personal usage. GitHub Copilot charges $0.04 per task with a frontier model in agent mode - and it’s considered expensive. That’s 850 coding tasks per day for $1k/mo, or around 1 per minute in a 16hr day. I’m not sure a single human could audit & review the output of $1k/mo in tokens from frontier models at the current market rate. I’m not sure they could even audit half that.
  - F7F7F7 1y ago
    Audit and review? Sounds like a vibe killer.
  - 7thpower 1y ago
    Do people actually use GitHub copilot? At any rate, I could easily go through that much with Opus because it’s expensive and often I’m loading the context window to do discovery, this may include not only parts of a codebase but also large schemas along with samples of inputs and outputs. When I’m done with that, I spend a bunch of turns defining exactly what I want. Now that MCP tools work well, there is also a ton of back and forth that happens there (this is time efficient, not cost efficient). It all adds up. I have Claude code max which helps, but one of the reasons it’s so cheap is all of the truncation it does, so I have a different tool I use that lets me feed in exactly the parts of a codebase that I want to, which can be incredibly expensive. This is all before the expenses associated with testing and evals. I’m currently consulting, a lot of the code is ultimately written by me, and everything gets validated by me (if the LLM tells me about how something works, I don’t just take its word for it, I go look myself), but a lot of the work for me happens before any code is actually written. My ability (usually clarity of mind and patience) to review an LLMs output is still a gating factor, but the costs can add up quickly.
    - adithyassekhar 1y ago
      > Do people actually use GitHub copilot? I use it all the time. I am not into claude code style agentic coding. More of the "change the relevant lines and let me review" type. I work in web dev, with vs code I can easily select a line of code that's wrong which I know how to fix but honestly tired to type, press Ctrl+I and tell it to fix. I know the fix, I can easily review it. Gpt 4.1 agent mode is unlimited in the pro tier. It's half the cost of claude, gemini, and chatgpt. The vs code integration alone is worth it. Now that is not the kind of AI does everything coding these companies are marketing and want you to do, I treat it like an assistant almost. For me it's perfect.
- sothatsit 1y ago
  You're not alone in using $1k+/month in tokens. But if you are spending that much, you should definitely be on something like Anthropic's Max plan instead of going full API, since it is a fraction of the cost.
- dingi 1y ago
  I'm starting to notice a pattern with these kinds of comments. They almost never provide any actual evidence for the work they mention.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Nizoss 1y ago
Yeah, this is a no brainer for certain use cases.
Terretta 1y ago
Define heavy... There's a band where the max subscription makes most sense. Thread here talks $1000/month, the plan beats that. But there's a larger area beyond that where you're back to having to use API or buy credits. A full day of Opus 4.1 or GPT 5 high reasoning doing pair programming or guided code review across multiple issues or PRs in parallel will burn the max monthly limits and then stop you or cost $1500 in top up credits for a 15 hour day. Wait, WTF, that's $300k/year! OK, while true, misses that that's accomplishing 6 - 8 in parallel, all day, with no drop in efficacy. At enterprise procurement cost rates, hiring a {{specific_tech}} expert can run $240/hr or $3500/day and is (a) less knowledgable on the 3+ year old tech the enterprise is using, (b) wants to advise instead of type. So the question then isn't what it costs, it's what's the cost of being blocked and in turn blocking committers waiting for reviews? Similarly, what's the cost of a Max for a dev that doesn't believe in using it? TL;DR: At the team level, for guided experts and disbelievers, API likely ends up cheaper again.

by pmxi 1y ago

> If you are a heavy user, you should use pay-as-you go pricing if you’re a heavy user you should pay for a monthly subscription for Claude Code which is significantly cheaper than API costs.

ramesh31 1y ago

Am I alone in spending $1k+/month on tokens? It feels like the most useful dollars i've ever spent in my life. The software I've been able to build on a whim over the last 6 months is beyond my wildest dreams from a a year or two ago.

zppln 1y ago
Care to show what you've built?
fainpul 1y ago
> The software I've been able to build on a whim over the last 6 months is beyond my wildest dreams from a a year or two ago. If you don't mind sharing, I'm really curious - what kind of things do you build and what is your skillset?
- stillsut 1y ago
  Not OP but I know it can be difficult to really difficult to measure or communicate this to people who aren't familiar with the codebase or the problem being solved. Other than just dumping 10M tokens of chats into a gist and say read through everything I said back and forth with claude for a week. But, I think I've got the start of a useful summary format: it that takes every prompt and points to the corresponding code commit produced by ai + adds a line diff amount and summary of the task. Check it out below. https://github.com/sutt/agro/blob/master/docs/dev-summary-v1.md#v017 https://github.com/sutt/agro/blob/master/docs/dev-summary-v1... (In this case it's an python cli ai-coding framework that I'm using to build the package itself)
tovej 1y ago
I would personally never. Do I want to spend all my time reviewing AI code instead of writing? Not really. I also don't like having a worse mental model of the software. What kind of software are you building that you couldn't before?
kergonath 1y ago
> Am I alone in spending $1k+/month on tokens? I would if there were any positive ROI for these $12k/year, or if it were a small enough fraction of my income. For me, neither are true, so I don’t :). Like the siblings I would be interested in having your perspective on what kind of thing you do with so many tokens.
- mewpmewp2 1y ago
  If freelancing and if I am doing 2x as much as previously with same time, it would make sense that I am able to make 2x as much. But honestly to me with many projects I feel like I was able to scale my output far more than 2x. It is a different story of course if you have main job only. But I have been doing main job and freelancing on the side forever now. I do freelancing mostly for fun though, picking projects I like, not directly for the money, but this is where I definitely see multiples of difference on what you can charge.
OtherShrezzing 1y ago
I’m unclear how you’re hitting $1k/mo in personal usage. GitHub Copilot charges $0.04 per task with a frontier model in agent mode - and it’s considered expensive. That’s 850 coding tasks per day for $1k/mo, or around 1 per minute in a 16hr day. I’m not sure a single human could audit & review the output of $1k/mo in tokens from frontier models at the current market rate. I’m not sure they could even audit half that.
- F7F7F7 1y ago
  Audit and review? Sounds like a vibe killer.
- 7thpower 1y ago
  Do people actually use GitHub copilot? At any rate, I could easily go through that much with Opus because it’s expensive and often I’m loading the context window to do discovery, this may include not only parts of a codebase but also large schemas along with samples of inputs and outputs. When I’m done with that, I spend a bunch of turns defining exactly what I want. Now that MCP tools work well, there is also a ton of back and forth that happens there (this is time efficient, not cost efficient). It all adds up. I have Claude code max which helps, but one of the reasons it’s so cheap is all of the truncation it does, so I have a different tool I use that lets me feed in exactly the parts of a codebase that I want to, which can be incredibly expensive. This is all before the expenses associated with testing and evals. I’m currently consulting, a lot of the code is ultimately written by me, and everything gets validated by me (if the LLM tells me about how something works, I don’t just take its word for it, I go look myself), but a lot of the work for me happens before any code is actually written. My ability (usually clarity of mind and patience) to review an LLMs output is still a gating factor, but the costs can add up quickly.
  - adithyassekhar 1y ago
    > Do people actually use GitHub copilot? I use it all the time. I am not into claude code style agentic coding. More of the "change the relevant lines and let me review" type. I work in web dev, with vs code I can easily select a line of code that's wrong which I know how to fix but honestly tired to type, press Ctrl+I and tell it to fix. I know the fix, I can easily review it. Gpt 4.1 agent mode is unlimited in the pro tier. It's half the cost of claude, gemini, and chatgpt. The vs code integration alone is worth it. Now that is not the kind of AI does everything coding these companies are marketing and want you to do, I treat it like an assistant almost. For me it's perfect.
sothatsit 1y ago
You're not alone in using $1k+/month in tokens. But if you are spending that much, you should definitely be on something like Anthropic's Max plan instead of going full API, since it is a fraction of the cost.
dingi 1y ago
I'm starting to notice a pattern with these kinds of comments. They almost never provide any actual evidence for the work they mention.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

Nizoss 1y ago

Yeah, this is a no brainer for certain use cases.

Terretta 1y ago

Define heavy... There's a band where the max subscription makes most sense. Thread here talks $1000/month, the plan beats that. But there's a larger area beyond that where you're back to having to use API or buy credits. A full day of Opus 4.1 or GPT 5 high reasoning doing pair programming or guided code review across multiple issues or PRs in parallel will burn the max monthly limits and then stop you or cost $1500 in top up credits for a 15 hour day. Wait, WTF, that's $300k/year! OK, while true, misses that that's accomplishing 6 - 8 in parallel, all day, with no drop in efficacy. At enterprise procurement cost rates, hiring a {{specific_tech}} expert can run $240/hr or $3500/day and is (a) less knowledgable on the 3+ year old tech the enterprise is using, (b) wants to advise instead of type. So the question then isn't what it costs, it's what's the cost of being blocked and in turn blocking committers waiting for reviews? Similarly, what's the cost of a Max for a dev that doesn't believe in using it? TL;DR: At the team level, for guided experts and disbelievers, API likely ends up cheaper again.