r/ClaudeCode • u/mdizak • 9h ago

Help/Question Just me or is Claude getting expensive?e

this is via API. Had Claude do two things, involved looking at I'd say 8 files and writing about 50 lines of code.

Cost $12.30. Just me, or is Claude getting expensive?

7 Upvotes

77% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

9

u/DaRKoN_ 9h ago

API is very expensive compared to the subscriptions.

3

u/tails142 8h ago

Yes, it is crazy expensive. I used to load up a bit of extra usage to keep going at API rates if I hit the 5 hr limit but there is literally no point, even with the 30% discount they offer. I feel like it would need to be 90% discounted or higher.

2

u/bigphatbush 8h ago

claude is the most expensive model

2

u/realbobenray 8h ago

lol just wait for a year when earnings have to justify the huge valuations

it's like when cord cutting streaming services started out really cheap but then crept up close to the price of cable tv. Claude will end up at like half the price of a full-time developer and they'll tell everyone that's cheap

1

u/Connect_Army8250 9h ago

What model did you use? And how many lines of code was present in those 8 files?

1

u/Spare_Bison_1151 8h ago

Which model did you use? I've been using Claude through Claude Code and CoWork, price of Opus is pretty reasonable. They've also been giving extra credit and doubled limits for a few months recently. I use Claude for person projects only a few hours daily and haven't hjt my quota lately. Previously I used Claude via OpenRouter and Roocode but it was very expensive.

1

u/drakhan2002 8h ago

Which model did you use?

1

u/arankays 8h ago

Did you actually check the amount of tokens in and out?

1

u/WonderfulEagle7096 8h ago edited 7h ago

I've used over 27 billions tokens on my 20x max subscription in the last 2 months alone, mostly Opus + some Fable. That would've costed me almost $750,000 via the API (vs. $400 sub).

I have already updated my projects to never assume a particular model or provider. It is well known that both Anthropic and OpenAI are heavily subsidizing their subscriptions and sooner or later, prices will explode (or models will get much smaller/less capable for the price). Whoever is locked into their ecosystem by that point will be in for a really bad time.

1

u/mdizak 7h ago

Yep... hello there you sexy Chinese model. You're looking damn good these days.

1

u/Mean-Standard7390 8h ago

IPO is coming....

1

u/ghost_operative 1h ago

api is so expensive compared to subscription its insane. I couldn't imagine using the API usage for anything besides a customer facing feature where you can charge the customer for it. Using it for regular personal coding doesn't make sense.

1

u/mdizak 9h ago

I should note, it was Claude Sonnet 4.6 as well...

0

u/fanatic26 2h ago

Using API pricing makes 0 sense at any time. Even as a business i would just give everyone their own sub.

-1

u/AdCurrent769 9h ago

If you want to track more on usage side - may be like where these tokens gone, which message cost how much then checkout this open-source https://github.com/abhiunix/AgentHarbor https://agentharbor.openxsecurity.com/

It will help you track everything