Cost to Run a Coding Agent for 8 Hours with LLM APIs
Calculate the real cost of running an AI coding agent for 8 hours. Compare all LLM APIs with verified per-million-token pricing for agentic coding workloads.
⚡ Your Workload
📊 Cost Summary
Cost per hours across 153 models
Show all 153 models in a table
| Model | Provider | Input $/M | Output $/M | Cost for 8 hours |
|---|
How this calculator works
An AI coding agent (like Claude Code, Codex CLI, or Cursor) consumes approximately 50,000 input tokens and 15,000 output tokens per hour of active use. This includes reading code context, tool calls, file diffs, and generated code. Agentic workloads are token-intensive because the model repeatedly reads and writes files. Actual usage varies significantly based on codebase size, task complexity, and how many iterations the agent needs.
Formula: cost = (input_tokens × input_price_per_Mtok + output_tokens × output_price_per_Mtok) × quantity / 1,000,000
All prices are per million tokens, sourced directly from official provider pricing pages and verified by our automated scraper pipeline that runs 3× daily. No fabricated numbers — every price links to its source.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to run a coding agent for 8 hours?
Running an AI coding agent for 8 hours typically costs $2-5 with budget models (DeepSeek, Gemini Flash), $15-40 with mid-tier models (GPT-4.1, Claude Sonnet), and $80-200+ with frontier models (Claude Opus, GPT-4.1). The wide range reflects different pricing tiers and the token-intensive nature of agentic coding.
Which LLM API is cheapest for running a coding agent?
DeepSeek V3 and Gemini Flash are the cheapest options for coding agents, costing $2-5 per 8-hour session. However, coding quality matters — cheaper models may require more iterations, increasing total token usage. Mid-tier models like Claude Sonnet often provide the best cost-to-quality ratio for coding tasks.
How are coding agent token costs calculated?
An active coding agent uses ~50,000 input tokens/hour (code context, tool results) and ~15,000 output tokens/hour (code generation, edits). Total cost = (input_tokens × input_price + output_tokens × output_price) × hours. Prices are per million tokens from official provider pricing.