ai coding cost

How to Handle GitHub Copilot's Token Costs Without Going Broke

GitHub Copilot moved to per-token billing and one developer's bill jumped from about $29 to a projected $750. Switching tools won't save you, because the same shift is happening everywhere. Here's why your bill exploded in plain English, the practical levers that cut it today, and how verifiable specs attack the cost at its root.

Your AI Is Charging You Rent to Re-Read the Same Code Every Day

Per-token billing turned a flat $29 AI coding plan into a $750 surprise. The waste was always there: most of the bill is your AI re-reading code it already saw. Here's why it happens and how to cut it, with prompt caching, the right model, the right plan, and a lasting memory of your codebase.

I Tracked 100 Million Tokens of Claude Code Usage. 99.4% Were Wasted on Reading.

A developer tracked every token Claude Code consumed for a month. The result: 99.4% were input tokens. For every 1 token written, 166 were consumed reading. Here's what that means for your bill.

Why Your $20/Month Claude Pro Plan Runs Out in 3 Prompts (And What's Actually Eating Your Tokens)

Your Claude Pro subscription burns through its 5-hour session limit in minutes. Here's the technical reason: your AI agent wastes 70% of your tokens reading files instead of answering your question.