Show HN: Claude Code's $200 plan is a 17× subsidy on the raw API
A recent analysis of Claude Code's API usage reveals significant costs associated with re-reading context. The study found that 64% of the billing is due to re-reading previously sent context, leading to a total monthly cost of approximately $3,371. Caching plays a crucial role in reducing costs, as without it, expenses could soar to over $22,000.
- ▪The analysis was based on one user's logs, which included 181 sessions and over 25,000 model calls.
- ▪Re-reading context accounts for 64% of the total bill, with input costs dominating at 84%.
- ▪Caching is essential for cost management, as it significantly reduces the overall expenses associated with API usage.
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
claude-code-token-xray Reverse-engineer a month of your own local Claude Code logs (~/.claude/projects/*/*.jsonl) into where the tokens, time, and cost actually go — and run it on yours. Reads only local logs; nothing is sent anywhere. What it found (one month of my own logs — 181 sessions, 25,564 model calls): You don't pay to generate, you pay to re-read. ~29M unique tokens → 4.35B billed (~150×), because every turn re-sends the whole ~173K-token context. The bill is 84% input / 16% output — and re-reading the same context is 64% of it. The biggest line is the one you never see: hidden reasoning is 84% of output and ~60% of everything re-read. ~$3,371 for the month at Opus 4.7 list rates. Caching already serves 98% of input — and re-reading is still 64% of the bill.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at GitHub.