How many credits (and money) should i expect claude code to use per prompt? To give you an understanding my repo has around 60k lines of code. Also if I buy credits can I be sure that it won't automatically charge for more once they end? I would like to avoid going on a bread and water diet on the next month because of AI

Understandably, this is usage dependent but I'm curious to know what's the typical usage rates for readers of this sub.

I have $330 Claude credits expiring in 1 week.

What have you guys found to be the best use of the API? I find day to day, gemini api accomplishes most of what I need for a much lower cost so I can't think of a good use for these remaining credits.

How would you use these credits? When is Claude worth the price increase?

For reference

• Gemini 2.0 Flash -> Input $0.10 / 1M tokens, Output $0.40 / 1M tokens

• Gemini 1.5 Pro -> Input $1.25 / 1M tokens, Output $5.00 / 1M tokens

• Claude 3.7 Sonnet -> Input $3 / 1M tokens, Output $15 / 1M tokens

I use cursor for coding, OpenAI subscription for deep research.

What do I need Claude for anymore... It's 2-3x the price.

Is there a cool open source project I should try out that requires a smarter model? Is there an app idea/workflow that requires using a smarter model that I can add to my workflow in the next week?

Is there a way to sell these credits?

Since launching Claude Code on the web, your feedback has been invaluable. We’re temporarily adding free usage so you can push the limits of parallel work and help make Claude even better.

Available for a limited time (until November 18):
• Max users: $1,000 in credits
• Pro users: $250 in credits

These credits are separate from your standard plan limits and expire November 18 at 11:59 PM PT. This is a limited time offer for all existing users and for new users while supplies last.

Learn more about Claude Code on the web:
• Blog post: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-code-on-the-web
• Documentation: https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/claude-code/claude-code-on-the-web

Start using your credits at claude.ai/code. See here for more details.

I work for a company that has some databases with content created by various freelancers since different domains require different experts with their respective area of expertise. One of these databases is moderately sized at 2000 entries with quite a number of interrelated columns. As is to be expected, it's a mess because no two people follow the same standards, and people can be sloppy sometimes in very technically nuanced ways that are hard to catch.

This is where Claude Code Web comes in. Together with the project lead, I created quite technical and nuanced instrucctions for Claude Code to analyze each and every entry in this database and perform a comprehensive fact check using various specialized subagents in parallel. We had already tested and refined the prompts so we knew it did a pretty good job in informing us of factual inaccuracies in the database content. Suddenly, I get 1000$ for free in Claude credits, so I spin up 30+ agents to work in parallel since this task is extremely parallelizable in nature. I'm mildly surprised it let me spin up that many agents. There was a toast message a couple of times that I apparently reached the concurrency limit, but it would just spin up the agents regardless.

I go for dinner, and once I come back I have burned through 500$ and fact-checked a decent chunk of my database and found a bunch of really nuanced factual inaccuracies. Rinse and repeat aaaaaaand it's gone. I burned through 1000$ of Claude Code Web credits in one evening.

But let's be real for a moment. Please don't burn tokens just because you can. Don't compete on token leaderboards and stuff like that. I did this specifically because

• It is a very nuanced workflow that had been previously tested a lot and we knew from experience that it could reliably be highly parallelized since the individual database entriers are independent. It took me a few initial runs to adjust some minor things to the Claude Code Web environment but then it ran just as smoothly as in my terminal.

• Facts for the database entries can be easily checked with web searches, but usually require checking various sources and aggregating a lot of information. Claude Code usually performs something between 10 and 30 web searches to verify all the factual claims in one entry, which is the bulk of the cost. Analyzing 100 entries takes about 2000 web searches plus a bunch of additional work.

• It actually provides significant value because the database that contains client-facing information now can be turned into something more professional and detailed with much less effort because our domain expert can just evaluate Claude's detailed reports on issues and double check the various sources and links it has provided. The actual value are literally hundreds of hours of work saved.

So, the question is: will I keep using Claude Code Web with my Claude Max subscription going forward? Yes, but only occasionally for now. I still prefer the terminal for more complex things and the fact that it spins up a new environment every time comes with some drawbacks. But I think it is quite decent for long-running established or simple workflows that you can just kick off and then forget about. For these it can be nice to just kick them off and be able to close my laptop. The only other application I honestly see is coding from my phone, which I don't expect I will be doing a lot but I think occasionally it will be helpful.

TL;DR: I gave Claude Code Web a highly parallelizable fact-checking task that requires a lot of web searches from different sources. Used the 1000$ free credits to do in an evening what would have required hundreds of hours of human work.

Hello! Long time user of Claude, recently started using Claude Code after joining the webinar where they gave every attendee $25 of free credits.

I use Claude in the UI whenever possible, but obviously the terminal access can be extremely helpful sometimes so my credits are slowly dwindling.

I'm a PhD candidate working on a side project in my free time, so I'm a bit cost-sensitive, so I was wondering if anyone knew of other ways to get free Claude Code credits?

No worries if not, I'm sure I'll be budgeting for Max sooner or later anyway :p

For those who have them (particularly $1k). I’m curious how are you spending them down? Are you using it in the same way as the cli tool?

Hi,

I have ~$200 of claude api credits that expire in a week from now. Any idea on how to use i? I was thinking to make an app to help me do taxes or optimize my taxes perhaps. If anyone has any other crazy idea, i am down to build it too and open source it too!

Hi guys, so Anthropic has API credit for student builders. I am currently a graduate student, so I would like to use Claude for my data analysis and primarily for studies/research. I am not a coder/programmer. How do I use this API for students. Never used APIs or programming in a serious setting? Thank you.

I just received an email from Anthropic:

We're offering a limited-time promotion that gives Pro and Max users extra usage credits exclusively for Claude Code on the web and mobile. This is designed to help you explore the full power of parallel Claude Code sessions without worrying about your regular usage limits.

Pro users receive $250 in credits
Max users receive $1,000 in credits

These credits are separate from your standard usage limits and can only be used for Claude Code on the web and mobile. They expire on November 18 at 11:59 PM PT. Your regular Claude usage limits remain unchanged.

Promotion dates: Tuesday, November 4, 2025 at 9:00 AM PT through Tuesday, November 18, 2025 at 11:59 PM PT.

Source: Claude Code Promotion | Claude Help Center

This information would have been useful before you suggested to me to buy credits to use with Claude Code. 🤦 I mean if it's a few hours or a few days, no big deal. But this message gives me no idea if it's going to be a short term wait or a long time. It is a research preview, so I could see it being a very long wait like Github Workspace was...

Hi All,

I'm still trying to work out if Claude is worthwhile to me. I paid for a month of Claude Pro subscription a month ago and was then surprised that I had to also pay extra for API credits to use Claude Code, but I reluctantly paid $25-$50 for them and was shocked when Claude kept getting stuck making and undoing the same sets of changes repeatedly, burning up all of my API credits. [I have a good idea of how to prompt and I varied my prompts to try to get around the seeming blockage, so I don't think that I was using the tool poorly.] Cost is a factor for me because I lost my job a few years ago and have had no luck getting another one.

I hadn't realized that I hadn't disabled the monthly plan and so I was just charged again for another month's subscription to Pro. I got to prompt it 2-3 times but have now exhausted my API credits. I can't afford to buy more.

I'm wondering why I must buy API credits when I already have a Pro subscription. I haven't seen a reason for having to make two purchases. I also can't understand why. Surely a Pro subscription gets me something, but if it's not ability to use the service, what is it? I originally thought I understood that API credits were to call the API, like in a deployed app, that probably makes me money. I'm not at that level yet, trying to figure out how Claude Code works for me. Am I hosed now, having paid for a month Pro subscription but not being able to afford more API credits?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Steven

I want to test Claude Code using the limited free credits I believe you get with a non Pro account. To do this which login method should I use:

1. Claude account with subscription Starting at $20/mo for Pro, $100/mo for Max - Best value, predictable pricing

2. Anthropic Console account API usage billing

Hey folks,
I’m not a developer - more of a researcher who codes occasionally, mostly as a hobby or to explore ideas. I’ve used Claude Code and really like what it can do, especially with complex coding prompts. But I just can’t justify $200/month for Claude Max (Opus) for something I might use 3–4 hours per week at most.

Right now I’m on Claude Pro (Sonnet), but for heavier coding tasks it starts to fall short.
Recently I discovered Zen MCP, which looks promising - especially the ability to plug in custom models like Gemini or O3 via API. I’m wondering:

• Is it smarter to just use Claude Code using API and pay per usage?

• Can I plug Claude Opus into Zen (or similar setups) and only fire it up when needed?

• Are there other MCP stacks that are worth exploring and I'm missing it?

I’m basically searching for a low-cost workflow to still access Claude Code at full power, but without being locked into a full Max subscription as I won’t fully use it.

If anyone has faced the same challenge — wanting Claude Code’s strengths without the full price - I’d love to hear how you solved it. Tips, setups, hacks, all welcome.

hi everyone, i’ve been using claude on the $20 plan and if i manage the 5-hour windows well, i can work just fine even on serious projects with a pretty large codebase. i end up using around $30 worth of credits per day, so i’m really curious how people on the $100 or $200 plans are fully using them.

what kind of tasks are you running that actually consume that much? are you doing things like constant fine-tuning, large-scale data work, or just leaving long sessions open all day with lots of back and forth?

i’m wondering if i’m underutilizing claude or if it’s just a different usage pattern. would love to hear how you’re making the most of it

From the email:

We're offering a limited-time promotion that gives Pro and Max users extra usage credits exclusively for Claude Code on the web and mobile. This is designed to help you explore the full power of parallel Claude Code sessions without worrying about your regular usage limits.

• Pro users receive $250 in credits

• Max users receive $1,000 in credits

These credits are separate from your standard usage limits and can only be used for Claude Code on the web and mobile. They expire on November 18 at 11:59 PM PT. Your regular Claude usage limits remain unchanged.

Promotion dates: Tuesday, November 4, 2025 at 9:00 AM PT through Tuesday, November 18, 2025 at 11:59 PM PT.

This is a limited time offer. It is available for existing users and only available for new users while supplies last.

EDIT: I want to highlight to everyone that this started as a fork of Claude Dev, which is why we’ve given full attribution and credit to original authors in the GitHub repo.

If anyone is curious why we made a fork, it’s so we could experiment with new ideas. We started to diverge enough from Claude-dev that we decided to stop making it temporary.

If you like it, great! We’re very collaborative and looking to integrate as many good ideas as possible. I think humans are only 1% down the path of building great coding agents and we hope to contribute.

Hey guys,

I’ve been working on Claude Coder, a semi-autonomous AI coder that helps you code on autopilot aimed towards no coders and coders alike. It’s open-source, and you can grab it right now on the VSCode marketplace or try it at Kodu.ai – no sign-up needed!

I've managed to partner with Anthropic to unlock a few things for the community:

• Zero Ratelimits using Claude and Sonnet (prompt caching included!!)

• $10 in free Anthropic credits (+ $10 for active users)

• One-click project deployment, web browsing capabilities, and a hosted web app to code on the go are coming soon!

• Zero Markups, our pricing is identical to Anthropic pricing, the cheapest provider out there.

• Free Trial no sign-up needed just download and start coding.

I wanted to personally note that I'm big about no data collection or sneaky cloud stuff, we don't read or store any type of prompt, message, or requests in our anthropic tunnel (links between your machine to anthropic through our unified API key), we only store the token usage to process user credits.

We are open source and welcome any types of contributions and feature requests at our Github (https://github.com/kodu-ai/kodu-coder)

🎬 Quick demo of Claude Coder in action (minor speedup)

Also, feel free to join our tiny but yet growing Discord and let me know what you think. Would love your feedback, I'm active most of the day (14ish hours T_T)

I've been inspired by Claude Dev, Aider, and Claude Engineer, and want to give a big shoutout to all of them for making this dream a reality!