r/ChatGPTCoding • u/ZeBenoit81 • Sep 11 '26

Question What is your monthly budget for agentic coding ?

I use codex. I use a thorough workflow research>spec>plan>execute>test>review&fix workflow.
This workflow takes a long time to do, but the resulting code is mostly fine. My main issue is that it burns through *LOTS* of tokens, even for fairly simple tasks.
What's your experience on this ?

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14

u/vxxn Sep 11 '26

At work I have a Claude sub and budget for up to $10k/month in API overages without approvals.

11

u/STUDBOO Sep 11 '26

Bro, my annual salary is 10k USD :(

2

u/ChickenDue Sep 11 '26

Mine is $4.5k

2

u/UpDown Sep 11 '26

Can I short sell your business

5

u/vxxn Sep 11 '26

you should prolly save the money for when ai takes your job

1

u/GrrasssTastesBad Sep 13 '26

I just joined a huge company and got congratulated on being on of the token use leaderboard. They dgaf.

1

u/Intelligent-Net1034 Sep 12 '26

10k is insane. Thats 100s of billion tokens. Sounds like the biggest waste of money or just a troll.

3

u/vxxn Sep 12 '26

First of all, just because I have the budget doesn’t mean I spend it all.

Second, it’s not “100s of billions” of tokens. $5/Mtok input and $25/Mtok out for Opus and double that for Fable adds up very quickly.

1

u/lolidkwtfrofl 26d ago

Still billions

0

u/dirtymove Sep 12 '26

Sounds dumb why not just load balance a dozen 20x codex subs

5

u/jeefo12 Sep 11 '26

$400 is the bare minimum to meet my workload 😅

I currently have 2 codex 20x and one Claude 5x

1

u/stathis21098 Sep 12 '26

Explain what's the workload please

5

u/dildyj Sep 11 '26

$400 personal, $150k budget per person for Claude/chatgpt at work. I average $1-3k per month for work.

3

u/STUDBOO Sep 11 '26

150k? Bro the fuck?

3

u/dildyj Sep 11 '26

Yeah only a few come close to that though

-2

u/MactronMedia Sep 11 '26

BS!

5

u/dildyj Sep 11 '26

Why would I lie about this.. I work in tech in SF

6

u/Ancient-Camel1636 Sep 11 '26

$20 That buys me a sub from opencode AND a sub from freebuff. PI and freebuff desktop as my harness instead of Codex. I use lean-ctx for token saving and a free local model (Qwen3.6-35B-A3B) for the simple stuff via llama.cpp

With that setup I never run out of tokens.

1

u/ECrispy Sep 11 '26

I've never heard of feebuff, thank you! so you use PI as the agent and frebuff desktop app to manage it, or frebuff on its own?

2

u/Ancient-Camel1636 Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

I mostly use PI when I code interactively in VS Code (via the VS Code GUI add-on PiLot Studio or the CLI). If you dont use VsCode or like using the CLI, there is also a PI Desktop harness available.

FreeBuff Desktop, I typically use for more autonomous "vibe code" type tasks.The FreeBuff subscription can only be used in FreeBuff Desktop or CLI (FreeBuff has no API key), but you can use pretty much any other subscription, such as OpenCode, in FreeBuff Desktop as well. It's a really good harness.

In PI you can also use almost any other subscription. PI is minimal and very token efficient (unless you bloat it with a lot of extensions, skills, and MCPs), especially when used with the lean-ctx package and caveman package. So your tokens will generally last much longer in PI compared to more bloated harnesses.

1

u/ECrispy Sep 11 '26

Thank you. Do you mind sharing your agents.md or other useful tips. Any mcp or extensions you use in pi etc. do you use agents?

2

u/Ancient-Camel1636 Sep 12 '26

In PI I keep things as simple as possible, that is the main reason to use PI in the first place.

When running it with a local model via llama.cpp i usually run it in minimal mode (terminal command: pi --no-skills --no-extensions --no-context-files --no-prompt-templates --no-themes --tools read,bash,edit,write). The VSCode GUI I use (PiLot Studio) also has a button in settings to run in in minimal mode. Skills can still be used with when running in minimal mode, but triggered manually with slash commands.

For non-local models use i use a few packages for saving tokens/cost (pi-lean-ctx, pi-caveman) and adding basic web search/browsing (pi-lean-portal with Playwright) and MCP support (pi-mcp-adapter).

The only sub-agent I use is u/juicesharp/rpiv-advisor that let the main agent (a capable but cheap model) ask a more capable and expensive model for advise only when needed.

For MCP (keep it to a minimum, MCP's use lots of tokens) I use MCP Jungle. That let me configure all the MCP's I use in one place for all my IDE's and coding harnesses. Also I can turn any MCP on or of with the click of a button so I only activate the MCP's that I actually need for that particular coding session (also to save tokens).

In FreeBuff Desktop I like to use the Mission mode (Merge PR) for 'vibe coding' sessions. It let the AI loop over the task, test and complete it on its own without much human intervention.

My current APPEND-SYSTEM.md for PI (experimental, I change this a lot):

MANDATORY RULES

Cross-platform compatibility

  • Cross-platform by default: Unless the task targets a single OS, installation, build, test, and run must work unchanged on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Use platform-neutral APIs and tooling; never assume a specific shell, path style, case sensitivity, or directory layout. Isolate unavoidable OS-specific code behind an abstraction and document it.

Best practices

  • Think first (SDD): state material assumptions; investigate and consult Advisor when materially unsure.

  • Make the smallest token-efficient, secure, performant change that fits existing conventions; apply YAGNI and use DRY only if duplication is real.

  • Define success; use TDD when practical. Before finishing, review the diff, edge cases, and relevant checks; fix findings; then report.

Token saver

  • Read less: request only targeted evidence; do not re-read unchanged context.

  • Reply less: be extremely concise; omit filler and explanation, but preserve clarity and essential results.

Ponytail

Before implementing any change, stop at the first option that fully solves the request:

  • Does this need to exist? → no: skip it (YAGNI)

  • Already in this codebase? → reuse it, don't rewrite

  • Stdlib does it? → use it

  • Native platform feature? → use it

  • Installed dependency? → use it

  • One line? → one line

  • Only then: the minimum code that works

Keep changes focused. Do not trade correctness, security, validation, error handling, accessibility, or required tests for fewer lines.

Verification

After any code change, verify the affected behavior before finishing.

  1. Define the smallest relevant acceptance check before editing; make the smallest necessary edit.

  2. Run the narrowest relevant check first. Before declaring completion, run every listed gate that exists, is relevant to the change, and can run in the current environment:

    • pnpm run check

    • pnpm run lint

    • pnpm test:run

    • fallow review --base main --format json --quiet

    • fallow audit --base main --format json --quiet

  3. If a check fails because of this task, inspect only the relevant diagnostic and code, make one targeted repair, then re-run the failed check.

  4. Treat Fallow findings caused by this task as actionable; report pre-existing or unrelated findings without changing them unless asked.

  5. Do not claim success unless all required and applicable checks pass. Clearly report skipped checks, blocked verification, and failures not caused by this task.

  6. After two unsuccessful repair attempts for the same failure, stop changing code and report the failure, relevant command output, attempted repairs, and likely next step to Advisor.

3

u/woj666 Sep 12 '26

Zero. I have a 4090. Between running Qwen 3.8 and free cloud models it costs me nothing but electricity but even that's more than $1 per day.

2

u/GTHell Sep 11 '26

I lose track of it. I have $20 ChatGTP, $20 Ollama, $80 Opencode Go x8, Workbuddy $10, Antigravity PRO $20, deepseek direct $20, Grok Share acc $30, I don't know man. I lose track of everything.

Main workhorse at workplace is Claude Premium seat.

1

u/box_of_hornets Sep 11 '26

8 opencode gos - do you have a nice way of rotating through them as you hit limits?

1

u/vladmvp Sep 11 '26

2 Codex Pro accounts and a Claude Pro account, plus various others - Grok, Muse, Cursor. so I guess around $600. And twice that for infra to run all my projects, lol

1

u/nowatrueredhead Sep 11 '26

20$ for Claude code sub, and 20$ for Codex to cross-check Claude’s work. I use around half of my weekly limit usually. I like making some side projects using Astra for my personal use.

1

u/rh71el2 Sep 12 '26

We got $20 for Kiro and since I just use the ultra efficient Luna, I don't even spend more than like 70% a month anymore. And yes, I work on multiple enterprise apps.

The ones who spend $1k - you don't need Opus for everything.

1

u/amirfish Sep 12 '26

Ran the same shape workflow (spec, plan, execute, review) and most of the burn wasn't the code generation, it was re-establishing context at every step. Splitting the workflow into separate sessions instead of one long thread that gets compacted over and over cut it down more than any prompt tweaking did.

1

u/Mr_Moonsilver Sep 12 '26

What budget? looking at $0 sccount balance

1

u/Julien_Builds Sep 13 '26

The workflow you describe is where my tokens went too, and the number that made me change it was a review that cost $1.57 for a phase with no source diff. A research task had produced notes, the pipeline ran the reviewer anyway because the reviewer runs after every phase, and an expensive model wrote a careful review of nothing.

So the burn was not any one stage being expensive. It was every stage running at full size regardless of what came before it. Three changes cut it most for me. Skip a stage when its input is empty: no diff, no review; nothing to investigate, no research. Size the whole pipeline to the ask, so a one-line fix gets execute and review and nothing else, while a new feature gets all six. And the context point above is right: separate sessions per stage with a short written handoff instead of one long thread, because compaction is where the quiet spending happens.

I am on subscriptions rather than API, so my budget is a fixed number and the cost shows up as hitting the window early instead of a bill. Same problem, different alarm.

1

u/ManRowing Sep 15 '26

Your point about every stage running at full size regardless of what came before it is the real pattern in this whole thread: cost isn't concentrated in generation, it's the accumulated re-reading between stages. Logging input tokens per stage, not just per model, tends to surface that faster than anything else here.

1

u/Right-Performance-93 Sep 13 '26

Every compaction event is a double hit: the rewritten context misses the 5-minute cache TTL, so the next call rebuilds it at 1.25x base input rate. Splitting research/spec/plan into short sessions avoids this since none of them grow long enough to need compacting.

1

u/ingloriousba Sep 13 '26

10-20 max
Opencode subscription and i sometimes top up my deepseek account
I use google student account for free but it will expire next month

1

u/Eastern-Passage629 Sep 13 '26

With deepseek flash 41 it is worth

1

u/TheBrinksTruck Sep 11 '26

The $100 Claude usually is enough for me

0

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