Claude Code cost calculator

Max is worth it when the same work would cost more than its price on the API: $100 a month for Max 5x, $200 for Max 20x. Anthropic's Claude Code docs put the average API cost at about $13 per developer per active day, or $150 to $250 a month, so a full-time user often passes $100. Paste your own numbers above to check. Each plan also has session and weekly limits, and Anthropic does not publish them as token counts.

Claude Code is included in every paid Claude plan: Pro at $20 a month ($17 a month with $200 billed yearly), Max 5x at $100 and Max 20x at $200. With an API key you pay per token instead. On Opus 5.5 that is $4 per million input tokens, $20 per million output tokens and $0.20 per million tokens read from cache.

The API is cheaper while your monthly token cost stays under the plan price. Under $20 a month, pay as you go wins. Over $100 a month, Max 5x costs less for the same work as long as you stay inside its limits. Cache reads are about 94% of the tokens in Anthropic's own /usage example, so the cache read price drives most of the bill.

Max 5x costs $100 a month and gives five times Pro's usage per five-hour session. Max 20x costs $200 a month and gives 20 times. Both reset the session limit every five hours and add a weekly limit across all models. Both include Claude Code, and Anthropic's plan table lets Fable use up to half of the weekly limit on both.

Run /usage in Claude Code. The Session block lists input, output, cache read and cache write tokens for each model, and you can paste those lines into this calculator. For a whole month, the open source ccusage tool reads your local Claude Code logs: run bunx ccusage monthly --json and paste the output.

Claude Code pauses until the limit resets, unless you turn on usage credits. Usage credits let you keep working at standard API rates. The session limit resets every five hours, and paid plans also have a weekly limit.

Pro runs Fable on usage credits at API rates, so this calculator adds your Fable cost to the Pro price. Max 5x and Max 20x include Fable for up to 50% of the weekly limit, per Anthropic's plan table. Fable 5.1 costs $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens on the API.