What is your Claude subscription worth at API prices?
A Claude plan isn’t billed per token. But at API prices, what would the work it lets you do be worth? Enter your volumes and the calculator applies the official prices.
What your usage would cost at API prices
In millions of tokens per month
Value at API prices
$275 a month
- Input $80
- Output $80
- Cache reads $40
- Cache writes $75
2.8 times the price of Max 5x
API prices in US dollars per million tokens, before tax. 5-minute cache write: 1.25 times the input price; cache read: 0.1 times (0.05 on Opus 5.5, 0.025 on Fable 5.1). A plan isn’t billed per token: this figure gives an order of magnitude of what your work represents.
API prices
| Model | Input | Output | Cache read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $10 | $50 | $0.25 |
| Opus 5.5 | $4 | $20 | $0.20 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $2 | $10 | $0.20 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $1 | $5 | $0.10 |
In US dollars per million tokens, before tax, from Anthropic’s API pricing page on September 29, 2026. A 5-minute cache write costs 1.25 times the input price, a 1-hour write 2 times. Batch processing is half price.
An official benchmark
Claude Code’s documentation gives an order of magnitude, measured across enterprise deployments: about $13 per developer per active day, $150 to $250 a month, and under $30 per active day for 90% of users.
At that pace, a month of work is worth more than Max 5x at $100. It’s an average: your usage may be very different.
Reading the result
The figure isn’t what you would actually pay: on the API you would probably change your habits. It’s what the work your plan covers represents. Above the plan’s price, the plan is a good deal; below it, a smaller plan or the API might do.
Frequently asked questions
Where do I find my token volumes?
In Claude Code, /usage shows the session cost and your plan’s limits. JaugeAI adds up the tokens of all your sessions and runs this calculation continuously.
Why do cache reads weigh so much in volume?
Claude Code sends the context back on every turn; the part already cached is re-read at a reduced price. Hence large read volumes at a modest cost.
Does the cache last as long on a plan?
No: according to the documentation, it lasts 1 hour on a subscription, and 5 minutes on usage credits or an API key.