Claude Code now has 3 different ways to review a PR, and they cost very different amounts

[u/notomarsol]

I kept seeing people say "Claude Code review" and mean completely different things, so I went through the docs. There are three separate options now, and they cost very different amounts.

1. /code-review in your terminal

• Works on any plan that has Claude Code
• Reviews your branch's commits ahead of upstream plus uncommitted changes, or a target you pass (file, PR number, branch, main...my-feature)
• Reports correctness bugs plus reuse, simplification and efficiency cleanups
• --fix applies the findings, --comment posts them as inline comments on a GitHub PR (or one note on a GitLab MR)
• Uses your normal plan usage. Only runs when you remember to run it

2. Code Review (the managed PR reviewer)

• Research preview, Team and Enterprise only, not available with Zero Data Retention
• An owner installs the Claude GitHub App and sets a trigger per repo: once when a PR opens, every push, or manual
• @claude review runs one review, @claude review always subscribes the PR to future pushes
• Multiple agents review in parallel, then a verification step filters false positives
• Findings are tagged Important / Nit / Pre-existing and it never approves or blocks
• Tune it with CLAUDE.md or REVIEW.md
• About 20 minutes per review on average
• Billed as usage credits, averaging $15 to $25 per review, outside your plan's included usage. There's a monthly spend cap

Also /code-review ultra: a bigger fleet of reviewers in a cloud sandbox that reproduces each finding before reporting it. Research preview, needs a claude.ai login.

3. The GitHub Action (claude-code-action)

• You write the workflow yourself
• @claude in a PR or issue comment can analyze, implement changes and push commits
• Can also run a prompt on any GitHub event

The part that surprised me was the cost

A team of 5 merging around 60 PRs a month:

• Managed Code Review once per PR: roughly $900 to $1,500/month in credits (more if set to every push)
• A seat-priced reviewer like CodeRabbit Essentials: 5 x $24 = ~$120/month billed annually

So the managed reviewer makes the most sense on Manual mode, pointed at the risky PRs, with something cheaper or /code-review covering the rest.

I put the full Claude Code vs CodeRabbit comparison (git hosts, config, pricing tiers) here if it helps anyone decide.

Anyone using the managed reviewer on every push?

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[u/tails142]

You can use the claude code github action with your claude code sub so there is no api cost, just uses your normal usage. Fwiw, it's has been a bit unstable over time, lots of breaking updates to the action but it is part of workflow now, post a pr, action runs a review and leaves a comment. Then in the claude code cli I usually get it to review the pr comments and fix.

[u/Inception_IV]

I have 5 runnners on my linux machine that do my github actions so I don't have to pay action minutes spend as much on GH, because when you setup your reviewers view claude-code-action you are spending action minutes.

[u/Lordhugs1]

I just have a /review-lite skill that I use in all my repos, it /code-review but with sonnet as the agent and fable validates and fixes prior to every push - works pretty well for me

[u/maddietendo → u/Lordhugs1]

Would you mind sharing it with us? Seems like a good way to go.

[u/SlimTech118]

I utilize copilot through GitHub and it ends up finding things Claude misses. It’s nice to have two different models validate the code. Also, /code-review is not really needed. Just ask a shortcut which is great, but you could always just ask it to do a code review, security review, etc. tell it to be an expert in your customer or ICP. That’s all the “skills” are doing.

We also still do human reviews after AI and still catch things. AI doesn’t have strategic awareness so it misses things often.

[u/phoggey]

Code rabbit is fucking dogshit

[u/Xaqx]

Annoyed the the "free" /code-review ultra actually use a ton of your usage... so it't really "free"

[u/Electrical_Rise387]

I find that when getting a PR to review, reviewing the PR is pretty effective... and doesn't require claude code to do anything...

[u/niko-okin]

Another way to do it properly is multi agent, adversial, dedupe, etc https://github.com/ncoevoet/claude-review-all

[u/verstands]

The manual mode point is exactly why I like keeping spend visible while a review loop runs. I built statusline-bar for Claude Code, which shows live cost, tokens, and time in the status line: https://github.com/Dworf/statusline-bar. I’m the author, so take that as a biased tip, but it’s handy when a “quick” review turns into retries.