Plans checked October 14, 2026
Claude Code's /usage command shows this figure for a session. Anthropic's average is $13; 90% of users stay under $30.
15 active days at the average comes to $195 a month, inside Anthropic's published range of $150–$250.
Paying per token, per month
$195
At API list price, with no subscription.
| Plan | Price a month | Against paying per token |
|---|---|---|
| Copilot ProGitHub Copilot · includes $15 of credits | $10 | $185 less |
| ChatGPT PlusCodex | $20 | $175 less |
| Claude ProClaude Code | $20 | $175 less |
| Cursor PremiumCursor | $30 | $165 less |
| Copilot Pro+GitHub Copilot · includes $70 of credits | $39 | $156 less |
| ChatGPT ProCodex | from$100 | $95 less |
| Claude MaxClaude Code | from$100 | $95 less |
| Copilot MaxGitHub Copilot · includes $200 of credits | $100 | $95 less |
| Cursor SuperCursor | $100 | $95 less |
| Cursor UltraCursor | $200 | $5 more |
A plan only saves this much if its limits cover your work. Vendors describe limits as multiples (“5x Pro”) or messages per five hours, not in tokens, so no calculator can promise that.
If you code with an agent on most days, a subscription is far cheaper than paying per token. At Anthropic's average, a month of Claude Code is worth about $195 at API prices: around 10 times the price of a $20 plan.
Paying per token wins only for light or occasional use, or when you need what plans do not give: no usage windows, full control over the model, or billing through your company's API account.
Monthly prices on each vendor's own page, checked October 14, 2026. What a plan includes is quoted in the vendor's own terms.
Anthropic
Claude Pro
More usage than the free plan, with Claude Code included.
$20/mo
Claude Max
5x or 20x the usage of Pro; the 20x tier costs more.
from$100/mo
Also runs on an API key from the Claude Console, billed per token at API prices.
Anthropic pricing pageOpenAI
ChatGPT Go
Codex with GPT-6 Luna only.
$8/mo
ChatGPT Plus
Codex with five-hour limits, for example 15–160 GPT-6.1 Sol messages per five hours.
$20/mo
ChatGPT Pro
$100, $200 or $500 a month, with no five-hour limit.
from$100/mo
Also runs on an OpenAI API key, billed at API prices (without the cloud features).
OpenAI pricing pageGitHub
Copilot Pro
$10 of AI credits a month plus a $5 flex allotment; 1 credit = $0.01.
$10/mo
Copilot Pro+
$39 of AI credits a month plus a $31 flex allotment.
$39/mo
Copilot Max
$100 of AI credits a month plus a $100 flex allotment.
$100/mo
No pay-per-token option; extra usage is bought as AI credits.
GitHub pricing pageCursor
Cursor Plus
Grok models only.
$8/mo
Cursor Premium
4x the usage of Plus. Other labs' models are billed separately at API list price.
$30/mo
Cursor Super
15x the usage of Plus.
$100/mo
Cursor Ultra
50x the usage of Plus.
$200/mo
Plans include Grok models; Claude, GPT and other labs' models are billed separately at API list price.
Cursor pricing pageOn a plan, the model comes with the price. Paying per token, it decides the price: Claude Opus 5.5 lists at $4.00 / $20.00 per million input and output tokens, Sonnet 5.5 at $2.00 / $10.00. Compare Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5.5
If you code with Claude Code on most working days, very likely. Anthropic puts the average at about $13 per active day at API prices, $150–$250 a month, while Max starts at $100 a month. Whether Max's limits cover your work depends on how heavily you use it; Pro, at $20, is the cheaper place to start.
Only for light use. At the average of $13 per active day, two days of agentic coding cost more than a month of Pro. An API key makes sense when you code rarely or need billing to run through a company account.
In Claude Code, the /usage command shows the session's cost at list price. Add up a typical day, enter it in the calculator above, and set how many days a month you code.
Prices checked on each vendor's page on October 14, 2026. We re-check every week.