Coding plan pricing comparisons based on actual usage
The article compares the pricing and performance of various AI coding subscription plans based on actual usage metrics as of May 1, 2026. It evaluates cost efficiency by calculating blended token prices and measures speed and token allocation across providers. The analysis reveals significant cost disparities, with Codex being heavily subsidized and Claude Pro being notably more expensive per token.
- ▪Codex offers a blended rate of $0.080 per million tokens, making it approximately 27 times more subsidized than direct API pricing.
- ▪Claude Pro (Opus 4.7) costs $0.744 per million blended tokens, about 10 times more than most other plans.
- ▪Kimi 2.6 and MiMo Pro score 54 on the Artificial Analysis Index, close to Opus-4.7 and GPT-5.5 which score 57 and 60 respectively.
- ▪MiniMax uses request-based metering instead of tokens, allowing up to 45,000 requests per week under its subscription plan.
- ▪DeepSeek v4 and Gemini are excluded from the main comparison due to lack of subscription options or restrictive free-tier limitations.
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← Back to blog May 1, 2026 Coding plan comparisons based on actual usage Measuring AI coding plans vs API pricing. Codex is subsidized ~27×, most others ~8×, and Claude Pro still costs ~10× more per token than the rest. By Bilal Bakht Ahmad Coding plans are now the default way to use frontier models for a lot of people, and the gap between the frontier models and open-weight models is narrowing each week — Kimi 2.6 and MiMo Pro score 54 on the Artificial Analysis Index, compared to 57/60 for Opus-4.7/GPT-5.5. It is obvious that coding plans are the cheapest way to access the most intelligent models.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Hacker News: Newest.
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