[iambenm]

Look at the subscriptions. That's how anyone using the stuff as an individual should be approaching it today if they are dealing directly with Anthropic or OpenAI.

With the $200 Claude subscription I was able to get around $13-15k of API equivalent usage in one month (note: this was during the "+50% usage" promotion that they have kept extending since May). When you hit your usage limit for a given time period you get cut off until the time period resets; don't bother paying for additional usage credits, you will be disappointed.

[weard_beard]

What I’m reading is this use case is for 3-5 days a week full time dev if you stick to off hours US time. That you can save significantly if you have spiky usage 1-2 days a week by going the ad hoc API route if you’re new and you need to install a bunch of monitoring tools to tell you how best to save week to eeek as your usage patterns change and you risk surprise bills in the 10s of thousands if you get it wrong.

[iambenm]

The approach I took was to start with the $20 plan, then when it became clear it wasn't sufficient I upgraded to the $100 plan. The $20 plan didn't cover one night of coding. With the $100 plan I started bumping into the 5 hour usage limits after ramping up over a week or two.

My average API equivalent use is around $30-40/hr. I would just bite the bullet on a plan for one month, then use that to calibrate your expectations around usage and cost optimization. The plans are heavily subsidized.

[weard_beard]

Thanks for the insight! Really wish they had easier cheaper ways to learn.