When AI Coding Gets Expensive
AI-assisted development has a usage bill now, not just a subscription fee.
While building callings.ai, I spend about 12 hours a day, weekends included, with AI inside my development workflow. Until June 1, that meant using both GitHub Copilot and Claude Code in VS Code, sometimes across multiple Copilot accounts just to work around rate limits and keep momentum.
One important clarification: for most of my actual coding, both tools were giving me access to the same default model, Anthropic Opus. So this was not really a story about one model beating another. It became a much simpler question: which product gives me the workflow and bandwidth I need without turning development into a daily expense spike?
With Copilot's newer pricing, my cost jumped to roughly $90 to $150 a day when I used Opus heavily. By comparison, Claude Code's top plan at $200/month is, so far, giving me the bandwidth I actually need for the same core model.
What I would miss most if I stop using Copilot is one specific capability: being able to switch to GPT 5.5 inside the same chat when I want a pass focused on code review. In my workflow, GPT 5.5 is especially good at that.
AI coding tools are no longer just about model quality. They are becoming workflow and cost decisions at the same time.
The question I am still trying to answer is whether others saw the same pricing concern after June 1 on GitHub Copilot, or whether this is specific to my setup.
#AICoding #SoftwareEngineering #ProductDevelopment #DeveloperTools