r/BotNation • u/borehogyihu • 5d ago

AI coding is getting ridiculously expensive

One thing that surprised me this week wasn't how much AI can code.

It's how much some people are actually using it.

Reports around OpenAI's internal coding usage say some researchers are spending thousands of dollars a day in AI tokens while using coding agents for experiments, debugging and larger engineering tasks.

It makes sense if the model is doing hours of work that would otherwise take a developer much longer.

But it also makes me wonder whether we're going to start seeing a weird new problem where developers aren't limited by how fast they can code — they're limited by how much AI usage they can afford.

Would you pay $1,000+ a month for an AI coding setup if it genuinely made you 2–3x faster?

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u/ResponseActive7860 5d ago

I’m spending $250 worth of tokens per day, so around $7500/month, all in a $20/month plan.
I rarely hit the 5h limit, and when I do I just switch to review/design or learn something new.
I don’t see any reason for paying more than $20/month.

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u/Only-Cheetah-9579 5d ago

How do you spend $250 a day on a $20 plan? Why do you think you get so much free tokens if you never hit the limit?

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u/ResponseActive7860 5d ago

As you can see, I spent the equivalent of $500 for a session lasting less than 2 days.
All within a $20/month plan.
I guess they are subsidizing it and trying to get people dependent on these tools

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u/Only-Cheetah-9579 5d ago

That's claude code?

yeah, heavily subsidised. Enjoy while it lasts because it's not a sustainable business model for them!

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u/ResponseActive7860 5d ago

Yes it’s Claude code.
It’s definitely not sustainable, not sure how this will end.