Manage costs effectively
Learn how to track and optimize token usage and costs when using Claude Code.
Claude Code consumes tokens for each interaction. The average cost is $6 per developer per day, with daily costs remaining below $12 for 90% of users.
For team usage, Claude Code charges by API token consumption. On average, Claude Code costs ~$50-60/developer per month with Sonnet 4 though there is large variance depending on how many instances users are running and whether they’re using it in automation.
Track your costs
- Use
/cost
to see current session usage - Anthropic Console users:
- Check historical usage in the Anthropic Console (requires Admin or Billing role)
- Set workspace spend limits for the Claude Code workspace (requires Admin role)
- Pro and Max plan users: Usage is included in your subscription
Managing costs for teams
When using Anthropic API, you can limit the total Claude Code workspace spend. To configure, follow these instructions. Admins can view cost and usage reporting by following these instructions.
On Bedrock and Vertex, Claude Code does not send metrics from your cloud. In order to get cost metrics, several large enterprises reported using LiteLLM, which is an open-source tool that helps companies track spend by key. This project is unaffiliated with Anthropic and we have not audited its security.
Reduce token usage
-
Compact conversations:
-
Claude uses auto-compact by default when context exceeds 95% capacity
-
Toggle auto-compact: Run
/config
and navigate to “Auto-compact enabled” -
Use
/compact
manually when context gets large -
Add custom instructions:
/compact Focus on code samples and API usage
-
Customize compaction by adding to CLAUDE.md:
-
-
Write specific queries: Avoid vague requests that trigger unnecessary scanning
-
Break down complex tasks: Split large tasks into focused interactions
-
Clear history between tasks: Use
/clear
to reset context
Costs can vary significantly based on:
- Size of codebase being analyzed
- Complexity of queries
- Number of files being searched or modified
- Length of conversation history
- Frequency of compacting conversations
- Background processes (haiku generation, conversation summarization)
Background token usage
Claude Code uses tokens for some background functionality even when idle:
- Haiku generation: Small creative messages that appear while you type (approximately 1 cent per day)
- Conversation summarization: Background jobs that summarize previous conversations for the
claude --resume
feature - Command processing: Some commands like
/cost
may generate requests to check status
These background processes consume a small amount of tokens (typically under $0.04 per session) even without active interaction.
For team deployments, we recommend starting with a small pilot group to establish usage patterns before wider rollout.