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Claude Cost Calculator

Work out what your Claude usage would cost at API prices and whether Pro, Max, Ultra or the API is cheapest for you.
Your usage
Estimate your usage or enter your token numbers.

How heavily do you use it on a working day?

$13 per active day, the average Anthropic reports for Claude Code in enterprise deployments.

What it costs you

API value of your usage

$260 per month

What the same usage would cost at API list prices.

Cheapest option

Claude Pro, with a caveat. The range for this plan is only derived, not measured.

  • Claude API$260

    pay as you go

  • Claude Pro$20

    Enough · $240 cheaper

    API value per month in measurements: $450 - $850 (derived)

  • Claude Max$100

    Enough · $160 cheaper

    API value per month in measurements: $2,300 - $4,300

  • Claude Ultra$200

    Enough · $60 cheaper

    API value per month in measurements: $3,900 - $17,800

All amounts in US dollars before tax. The providers publish no dollar cap; the ranges come from measurements and cover a whole month. Where a plan also has a limit per 5 hours, a single long session can end earlier.

How much API value the plans include

Anthropic states only factors for its plans, never a dollar cap. The ranges in the calculator therefore come from measurements, namely my own Claude Code logs and published reports.
  • Claude Pro: A limit per 5-hour session plus a weekly limit, both without a published figure. The range is derived (one fifth of Max); I have no direct measurement.
  • Claude Max: Five times the Pro usage per 5-hour session and per week. Lower bound from a published weekly measurement, upper bound converted from my Ultra figures with Anthropic's factors. In two documented cases a 5-hour session was used up at around $150.
  • Claude Ultra: Ten times the Pro usage per week, without a 5-hour limit for verified accounts. Ultra was previously called Max 20x. This is my own measurement with Claude Code on a single Ultra subscription. The weekly limit kicked in between about $900 and $6,000, typically around $2,000. My heaviest month came to about $17,800.

Sources of the measurements

  • Anthropic: Claude Code costs (November 12, 2026): Average of around $13 per developer per active day, 90% below $30.
  • Anthropic: Ultra plan (November 12, 2026): Ten times the Pro usage per week, no 5-hour limit for verified accounts.
  • Anthropic: Max plan (November 12, 2026): Five times the Pro usage every five hours and every week.
  • Botfarm: Claude Max true price (March 20, 2026): Weekly value of around $523 for Max, extrapolated from one weekly cycle of one author.
  • ccusage-report (October 2026): Two measured limit hits on Max at around $150 to $158 per 5-hour session, measured in October 2026.

As of November 12, 2026

Frequently Asked Questions

As soon as your usage costs more at API prices than the plan. For Claude Pro that is from $20 of API value per month, for Max from $100 and for Ultra from $200. Anyone using Claude Code regularly passes that quickly. Anthropic itself reports an average of around $13 per active day.

There is no official figure. In my own logs the weekly Ultra limit kicked in between about $900 and $6,000 of API value, typically around $2,000. According to Anthropic, Max gets five times and Ultra ten times the Pro usage per week. The values vary a lot because the limit depends on the model and the cache share, and because Anthropic sometimes resets the limits early.

No. The API value only says what the same usage would have cost through the API. Without a plan you would work differently, pick smaller models and run fewer things in parallel. My own figures are also those of an extreme user running several agents at once.

Claude Code stores every session locally. Tools such as ccusage read these logs and show input, output, cache write and cache read per month. Enter those four values in the calculator.

Anthropic bills the API in US dollars, and the measurements are in dollars too. The plan prices in the calculator are the US list prices before tax. Local prices can differ slightly.

Changelog

The latest updates and improvements to our Claude Cost Calculator
November 12, 20261.0.0

First version

  • Estimate based on API value per active day
  • Exact calculation with your own token numbers and current API prices
  • Comparison of Claude Pro, Max, Ultra and the API with measured ranges