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Spending Too Much Money on a Coding Agent

(allenpike.com)
152 points GavinAnderegg | 3 comments | 01 Jul 25 12:26 UTC | HN request time: 0.216s | source
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jbentley1 ◴[03 Jul 25 17:02 UTC] No.44457091[source]▶
My Claude Code usage would have been $24k last month if I didn't have a max plan, at least according to Claude-Monitor.

I've been using a tool I developed (https://github.com/stravu/crystal) to run several sessions in parallel. Sometimes I will run the same prompt multiple times and pick the winner, or sometimes I'll be working on multiple features at once, reviewing and testing one while waiting on the others.

Basically, with the right tooling you can burn tokens incredibly fast while still receiving a ton of value from them.

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unshavedyak ◴[03 Jul 25 17:09 UTC] No.44457150[source]▶
Max $100 or $200?

I'm on $100 and i'm shocked how much usage i get out of Sonnet, while Opus feels like no usage at all. I barely even bother with Opus since most things i want to do just runout super quick.

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1. borgel ◴[03 Jul 25 18:22 UTC] No.44457842[source]▶
Interesting, I'm fairly new to using these tools and am starting with Claude Code but at the $20 level. Do you have any advice for when I would benefit from stepping up to $100? I'm not sure what gets better (besides higher usage limits).
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2. vlade11115 ◴[03 Jul 25 20:11 UTC] No.44458752[source]▶
I recently switched from Pro to $100 Max, and the only difference I've found so far is higher usage limits. Antropic tends to give shiny new features to Max users first, but as of now, there is nothing Max-only. For me, it's a good deal nonetheless, as even $100 Max limits are huge. While on Pro, I hit the limits each day that I used Claude Code. Now I rarely see the warning, but I never actually hit the limit.
3. unshavedyak ◴[03 Jul 25 20:17 UTC] No.44458810[source]▶
No clue as i've not used Claude Code on Pro to get an idea of usage limits. But, if you get value out of Claude Code and ever run into limits, Max is quite generous for Sonnet imo. I have zero concern about Sonnet usage atm, so it's definitely valuable there.

Usage for Opus is my only "complaint", but i've used it so little i don't even know if it's that much better than Sonnet. As it is, even with more generous Opus limits i'd probably want a more advanced Claude Code behavior - where it uses Opus to plan and orchestrate, and Sonnet would do the grunt work for cheaper tokens. But i'm not aware of that as a feature atm.

Regardless, i'm quite pleased with Claude Code on $100 Max. If it was a bit smarter i might even upgrade to $200, but atm it's too dumb to give it more autonomy and that's what i'd need for $200. Opus might be good enough there, but $100 Opus limits are so low i've not even gotten enough experience with it to know if it's good enough for $200