I ran npx -y ccusage monthly --compact to get the following break-up of my AI coding agent costs.
| Month | Codex | Claude |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-09 | $37.47 | $2.29 |
| 2025-10 | $106.79 | $9.13 |
| 2025-11 | $100.35 | $14.24 |
| 2025-12 | $240.69 | $24.88 |
| 2026-01 | $100.89 | $20.28 |
| 2026-02 | $323.21 | $29.46 |
| 2026-03 | $1996.32 | $134.87 |
| 2026-04 | $401.36 | $47.07 |
| 2026-05 | $378.20 | $45.13 |
This shows the ROI of my $20 subscriptions to each. I get ~$35 worth of API calls for my $20 Claude Pro subscription and ~$400 of API calls for my $20 ChatGPT Plus subscription (on top of my ChatGPT chats.)
I end up using Codex a lot more - partly because it’s a bit more diligent, but mostly because it’s a lot cheaper.
Clearly, subscriptions are good deal for individuals. Codex, especially.
This may not be true for corporates. Simon Willison says that Anthropic and OpenAI both changed enterprise pricing to align with token prices. That means the cost of enterprise AI security is ~2-20 times their token budget - which is growing rapidly.
BTW, my moment of AI psychosis was in March 2026. The coding agents had increased their limits and I was tokenmaxxing. I’m far from that limit today, but the symptoms linger.
