What an AI coding agent actually costs — and how to spend less

The subscription-vs-API crossover is a computable number, not a matter of taste — and the tokens go almost nowhere people assume. We run a 40-turn Opus 5 session at $13.20 uncached and $2.86 warm, work the break-even for Pro, Max 5x and Max 20x, price the same session across four models at a clean…