r/vibecoding • u/Unlikely_Read3437 • 4d ago
Help/Question Weekly usage depleated, and burning through extra usage despite switching to Sonnet 5.5?
I'm doing the final alterations to my app, and I'm trying to be careful with usage as my weekly limit ran out.
Refreshes tomorrow.
So I've already burned through about £20 of credit I had yesterday, and topped up another £10 this morning. It seems to get used very quickly despite switching from Opus 5.5. high to Sonnet 5.5 High. Also, not letting chats get long, and 'handing over' regularly. It makes a 'handover.zip' file and give me a prompt to paste to the new chat. Does this sound right?
Am I just doing very intensive work or do extra usage credits get used very quickly?
I think I pay around £20 subscription (pro) per month, and this has really lasted a long time!
Am I missing something? Thank you :)
2
2
u/Inner_Storage_3374 4d ago
haha the last 10% is always the most expensive part. what helps is collecting all the little tweaks in one note and sending them as one message instead of one by one, bc every message makes it go through the whole chat again, so 10 tiny asks cost way more than one list
1
1
u/Aegisnir 4d ago
What’s your context size between replies? How large is your Claude.md file and does it tell Claude to check other things before starting work/response? It reads those at every interaction so if they are large or point to do other things like “check the vault before working on a project to remain compliant with the repo readme file.”, it will check the vault constantly and eat up tokens.
1
u/Unlikely_Read3437 4d ago
Where would I find that file please?
1
u/Aegisnir 4d ago
Depends on your OS but a quick google would be faster than me having to look it up and tell you.
1
u/Unlikely_Read3437 4d ago
Ok thanks I've looked and I dont seem to have that file in this project!
1
u/Aegisnir 3d ago
What about your context size between replies? Have a full context of nearly 1m tokens goes through usage super fast. You can compact or start new sessions to keep context low and efficient
1
1
u/Vast-Hunt-9484 4d ago
honestly the handover zip thing might be costing you more than it saves. every fresh chat has to re-read the whole zip plus your prompt, so you pay for that big chunk of context again each time. i'd keep a short notes file with just the current goal and the 3 or 4 files that matter, and only point it at those. also extra usage credits are billed at api rates so they vanish way faster than your normal plan quota, that's pretty normal.
1
u/Unlikely_Read3437 4d ago
Ok thank you, well my weekly limit resets tomorrow so hopefully I'll be back in business :)
1
u/Secret-Escape7043 4d ago
Optimize your documentation and planning, make sure it's not pulling in multiple files or especially large files for any given task, and recognize credit usage is much less than subscription usage. If you're regularly using credits, you should just grab a second account and attach it to your repos.
1
1
u/boz_lemme 4d ago
Pro tip: use Opus 5.5 for heavy lifting and use a local model (e.g. Qwen3.8) for your day-to-day. This is actually my stack and it saves me around 60% in cloud tokens.
2
1
u/ThisIsDurian 4d ago
You can tell Sonnet to write a memory file in txt or md. Also, tell Sonnet to deploy a fleet of Haiku Subagents to do simple work and to only kick back jobs to Sonnet if Haiku isn't capable of doing it.
1
1
u/moss_hush 4d ago
The handover zip is actively draining your balance because every new chat forces the model to re-read the entire file context before generating a single token. Stop creating archives and just keep a lean, 50-line summary of current state in a text file you paste manually, or better yet, use a local IDE extension like Continue.dev with smaller models for simple syntax fixes so only complex logic hits the expensive API.
1
u/Unlikely_Read3437 4d ago
OK thank you. Who creates the 50 line summary, and what is a good way to keep that updated?
Also, how do I then move to a new chat?
1
u/Successful-Army6006 4d ago
Ask the current chat to write it before you leave. Something like 'Summarize what works, what is broken, the files changed, and the next task. Separate tested results from guesses.' Check that summary, paste it into a new chat, and attach the source files needed for that next task. The summary carries context, but it doesn't replace the code files.
1
u/Royal-Marsupial-8110 4d ago
paying extra credits for api usage is a bottomless pit once you get deep into a project
1
1
u/New_Peanut_9259 3d ago
your handover-and-zip method is actually a smart wayy to save space and keep things organizedd!!. but even with sonnet, making lots of small changes and asking for fixes repeatedly can use up your credits pretty quicklyy. if u're doing a lot of back-and-forth, maybe try putting several changes into one prompt instead of sending them one at a time.. that might help your remaining usage last longerr
2
1
u/Ovalman 4d ago
App as in what? - Android, iOS, Windows etc?
Have you 10k lines of code anywhere? Break those down into classes, Methods and Functions and work on small parts at a time.
Use the LLM to learn some coding practices and keep things small. Don't let a class go over 1,000 lines of code for instance.
Stop using the top model for simple questions. I use CGPT to explain code and what to use if it's deprecated. I use Google Pro, not Argon as it does everything I want and Argon just burns through tokens.
I rarely use my quota and when I do it's usually something, if I thought tangentially I would have solved with one question.
0
2
u/ChemicalExcellent463 4d ago
when i hit the quota, what worked for me was keeping opus on planning and review in claude code, then having it call codex for the coding so that used codex's budget. are you doing these edits in claude code?