What AI coding tools really cost
The sticker seat price is the floor, not the cap. For any team that runs agents, included usage is a pool that runs out, and the real bill lands at two to five times the headline. Pick a scenario below and see the honest monthly cost across 19 tools, with the catch on every one.
Prices checked June 2026. Seat prices are official; overage is our estimate, not a quote.
"By 2028, AI coding costs will overtake the average developer's salary, due to rising LLM token consumption and increased consumption-based licensing cost."
Agent-first, long autonomous runs, premium models. The usage that blows past plan limits.
Annual billing is the cheaper, advertised rate for most tools.
Cheapest realistic pick
| Tool | Per dev / mo | Team / mo | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google · Standard The $19 Standard seat requires an annual commitment; month-to-month is $22.80. Usage is capped by daily request limits (about 1,500 requests/user/day on Standard), not metered overage. | $19 $19 | $95 | $1,140 |
| Amazon Q Developer hard cap AWS · Pro Pro is a flat $19/seat with no Enterprise tier and no annual discount. The agentic allowance (about 1,000 requests/mo) is a hard cap, not a metered overage. | $19 $19 | $95 | $1,140 |
| Atlassian · Rovo Dev Standard The $20 seat covers 2,000 Rovo Dev credits per month; heavy CLI or agentic use bills overage at $0.01 per credit. A default 2,000-credit extra-usage cap is auto-enabled, so a fully consumed overage roughly doubles the seat to about $40 per user. | $35 $30-$40 | $175 | $2,100 |
| Qodo · Teams The Teams seat ($30 annual, $38 monthly) includes 2,500 credits per seat per month. Premium models cost more per request (Claude Opus is 5 credits each), so the bucket drains fast. | $45 $30-$60 | $225 | $2,700 |
| Replit · Pro (team, flat) There is no per-seat Teams tier. Pro is a flat $100/mo ($95 billed annually) for up to 15 builders sharing one credit pool, so usage, not headcount, is the cost driver. | $46 $32-$59 | $228 | $2,740 |
| BytePlus · Pro (individual) There is no team or per-seat plan; TRAE sells individual subscriptions (Pro is $10/mo and includes about $20 of token-denominated Basic Usage). Billing is tokens-to-dollars, not requests. | $48 $25-$70 | $238 | $2,850 |
| GitHub · Copilot Business Since June 1, 2026 the $19 seat just buys a pooled bucket of GitHub AI Credits equal to the seat price (1,900 credits). Completions stay free, but chat, agents, and CLI burn credits. | $54 $34-$74 | $270 | $3,240 |
| Anthropic · Team (Standard seat) Claude Code is included on the Team Standard seat ($20/seat billed annually, $25 monthly), but the plan bills a 5-seat minimum, so a smaller team still pays for five. | $60 $20-$100 | $300 | $3,600 |
| JetBrains · AI Pro (Business) The $20 AI Pro Business seat buys only about 20 AI credits (roughly $20 of cloud-model compute) per month. Local code completion is unlimited, but chat and the Junie agent burn credits. | $65 $40-$90 | $325 | $3,900 |
| OpenAI · ChatGPT Business Since April 2, 2026 Codex is token-metered behind subscription limits. The $25 Business seat (min 2) is an allowance measured on rolling 5-hour windows, not a cap. | $75 $40-$110 | $375 | $4,500 |
| Anysphere · Teams (Standard seat) Teams usage is per seat and does not pool. One heavy dev blows their own allocation into pay-as-you-go (API list price plus a $0.25/M token rate) while quiet seats waste theirs. | $85 $57-$112 | $423 | $5,070 |
| Alibaba Cloud · Teams The $40 Teams seat includes 3,000 credits per seat that do not roll over; they reset to zero each billing cycle. Credits burn by model and token volume per request, with no published per-token rate. | $90 $60-$120 | $450 | $5,400 |
| Windsurf · Teams Each seat gets a daily and weekly usage allowance for the Cascade agent and premium chat (Tab and Command are unlimited). Overage bills at raw API token prices with no monthly ceiling. | $98 $65-$130 | $488 | $5,850 |
| Sourcegraph Cody est. Sourcegraph · Enterprise (no self-serve tier) Cody Free and Pro were discontinued in 2025. It is enterprise-only now, with an org-wide credit pool and an annual floor of about $16,000/yr. | $99 $79-$119 | $495 | $5,940 |
| Augment · Standard The $60 Standard seat includes 130,000 credits that pool across the team, but unused credits expire each month with no rollover, and plans cap at 20 users. | $110 $80-$140 | $550 | $6,600 |
| AWS · Pro The $20 Pro seat includes 1,000 monthly credits (Pro+ is $40 for 2,000, Power $200 for 10,000), and unused credits do not roll over. Credits are consumed fractionally and multiplied by the model. | $120 $40-$200 | $600 | $7,200 |
| Cognition · Teams The $40 Teams seat (min 2) bundles a usage quota; autonomous work beyond it is funded by prepaid on-demand credits billed in dollars. A credit meters how hard Devin works, not output you keep. | $615 $290-$940 | $3,075 | $36,900 |
| Cline your API key Cline · Team (bring your own key) The open-source extension is free, and the $20 Team seat (first 10 seats free) is a thin platform layer that buys no model usage. You pay raw provider token rates directly, with no Cline markup. | $743 $585-$900 | $3,713 | $44,550 |
| Tabnine your API key Tabnine · Code Assistant (annual) The $39 seat (annual billing only) does not include any LLM usage. You either bring your own model for unlimited use or pre-buy a token quota at the provider cost plus a 5% handling fee. | $782 $624-$939 | $3,908 | $46,890 |
Sorted by realistic monthly cost. The bold number is the midpoint; the range under it is the seat floor to a heavy-overage estimate. Coloured dot = our confidence in the figures. Tap a tool name to verify pricing at the source.
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The hidden costs to check before you buy
A seat price is the start of the conversation, not the end. These are the things that move the real bill, and the ones a single vendor page will not tell you.
Included usage is a pool, not unlimited
Most paid seats include a credit or token bucket sized to the seat price. Once it is empty you either pay overage or hit a wall. The sticker price is the floor, not the cap.
Per-seat vs pooled usage
Ask whether usage pools across the team or is locked per seat. On Cursor Teams it is per seat, so one heavy dev blows their own allocation into pay-as-you-go while quiet seats waste theirs. Copilot pools credits org-wide.
How overage is priced
Flat credits, raw API token rates, or a hard stop. Raw-token overage (Cursor, Windsurf) has no monthly ceiling, so a runaway agent run has no upper bound.
Platform tax: the seat that needs another product
Copilot Enterprise ($39) requires GitHub Enterprise Cloud at roughly $21/user/mo on top, so its real floor is about $60/seat. Check whether the seat assumes a paid platform you do not already have.
Annual commitment hides in the headline
Several headline prices (Gemini Code Assist, Qodo, Cursor) are the annual-billed rate. Month-to-month costs more, sometimes 20% more.
Seat minimums
Claude Team bills a 5-seat minimum and Codex Business a 2-seat minimum, so a 3-person team pays for more seats than it has.
Hard caps can block a sprint
Amazon Q and Gemini Code Assist stop you at a request limit with no buy-more option. That protects the budget but can halt work mid-task.
Premium models cost far more
A premium model (Opus, GPT-5.5) burns 5 to 10x the credits of the default model, and a single agent run costs far more than an autocomplete. Model mix drives the bill more than headcount.
Cloud and background agents bill by the task
Long autonomous or cloud runs (Codex cloud tasks, Devin) bill compute per task and can dwarf the seat fee. The seat is the entry ticket, not the meter.
Bring-your-own-key tools shift the cost, not remove it
Cline and Tabnine BYO have a near-free seat, but you pay the raw provider token bill. Cost scales with usage, not headcount, and can exceed a seat-based tool for heavy users.
Credit expiry and rollover
Some plans (Augment) expire unused monthly credits with no rollover, so a quiet month is money lost rather than banked.
Identity and infrastructure dependencies
Amazon Q assumes AWS plus IAM Identity Center, Gemini Enterprise assumes Google Cloud, and Sourcegraph Cody is enterprise-only on a Sourcegraph instance with a roughly $16,000/yr floor.
Admin observability and governance are tier-gated
Team tiers usually bundle a basic usage dashboard and centralized billing. But audit logs, SSO with SAML and SCIM, per-seat spend limits, and usage or log export are typically Enterprise-only. The monitoring and controls a larger team needs are rarely an add-on line item; they are the reason you move from the cheap team seat to the contact-sales tier.
Every tool and its sticker price
The advertised team or business seat price for each of the 19 tools, checked June 2026. This is the floor. The true cost above adds the usage overage that most teams actually hit.
| Tool | Plan | Seat / mo | Annual / mo | Billing model |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BytePlus TRAE BytePlus | Pro (individual) | $10 | n/a | Token-metered overage |
| GitHub Copilot GitHub | Copilot Business | $19 | $19 | Credit-metered |
| Amazon Q Developer AWS | Pro | $19 | $19 | Hard cap, no overage |
| JetBrains AI Assistant JetBrains | AI Pro (Business) | $20 | n/a | Credit-metered |
| Cline Cline | Team (bring your own key) | $20 | n/a | Bring your own key |
| Kiro AWS | Pro | $20 | n/a | Credit-metered |
| Atlassian Rovo Dev Atlassian | Rovo Dev Standard | $20 | n/a | Credit-metered |
| Gemini Code Assist Google | Standard | $23 | $19 | Hard cap, no overage |
| Claude Code Anthropic | Team (Standard seat) (min 5) | $25 | $20 | Subscription pool |
| OpenAI Codex OpenAI | ChatGPT Business (min 2) | $25 | $20 | Token-metered overage |
| Qodo Qodo | Teams | $38 | $30 | Credit-metered |
| Tabnine Tabnine | Code Assistant (annual) | annual only | $39 | Bring your own key |
| Cursor Anysphere | Teams (Standard seat) | $40 | $32 | Subscription pool |
| Windsurf Windsurf | Teams | $40 | n/a | Token-metered overage |
| Devin Cognition | Teams (min 2) | $40 | n/a | Credit-metered |
| Alibaba Qoder Alibaba Cloud | Teams | $40 | n/a | Credit-metered |
| Sourcegraph Cody Sourcegraph | Enterprise (no self-serve tier) | ~$59 est. | $59 | Credit-metered |
| Augment Code Augment | Standard | $60 | n/a | Credit-metered |
| Replit Replit | Pro (team, flat) | $100 flat | $95 flat | Credit-metered |
Frequently asked questions
How much do AI coding tools cost for teams in 2026?
As of June 2026, team seats run from about $19 per developer per month (GitHub Copilot Business and Amazon Q Developer) up to $100 or more for autonomous agent platforms. Seat price is only the floor: for heavy or agentic use, included usage is a pool that runs out, and the real bill typically lands at two to five times the sticker.
Will AI coding tools really cost as much as a developer salary?
Gartner projects that by 2028, AI coding costs will overtake the average developer salary, driven by rising token consumption and the shift to consumption-based licensing (Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Enterprise AI Coding Agents, May 2026). That is the trend this calculator exists to expose: as tools go agentic, the bill is driven by usage, not the seat.
What is the cheapest AI coding tool for a team?
On sticker price the cheapest team seats are GitHub Copilot Business and Amazon Q Developer at $19 per developer per month, and Claude Code Team Standard at $20 billed annually. The cheapest true cost depends on usage: light users stay near the seat price, while heavy agentic users can find a $19 seat costs more than a $40 one once overage is counted.
How much does GitHub Copilot cost for a team?
Copilot Business is $19 per seat per month and Copilot Enterprise is $39. Since June 1, 2026 both run on usage-based GitHub AI Credits (1 credit equals $0.01); each seat includes a credit pool equal to its price (1,900 credits for Business), code completions stay free and unlimited, and chat, agents, and CLI burn credits. Copilot Enterprise also requires GitHub Enterprise Cloud at about $21 per user per month on top.
How much does Cursor cost for a team?
Cursor Teams is $40 per seat per month, or $32 billed annually, for the Standard seat. Usage is per seat and does not pool, so a heavy developer blows through their own allocation into pay-as-you-go overage billed at model API prices, and daily agent users often reach $60 to $100 of true monthly cost.
How much does Claude Code cost for a team?
Claude Code is included on the Anthropic Team Standard seat at $20 per seat billed annually ($25 monthly), but the Team plan bills a five-seat minimum. Heavy engineering use needs the Premium seat ($100 to $125, about five times the usage), and Enterprise is a flat $20 seat plus API-metered usage that can reach $150 to $250 per developer per month.
How much does OpenAI Codex cost for a team?
Codex comes with ChatGPT Business at $25 per seat per month, or $20 billed annually, with a two-seat minimum. Since April 2026 it is token-metered behind subscription limits: the seat is an allowance on rolling windows, and long agentic or cloud sessions burn output tokens, after which you buy credits at 25 credits per dollar.
Why is the true cost of an AI coding tool higher than the seat price?
Almost every paid seat includes a credit or token pool sized to the seat price, not unlimited usage. Once that pool is empty you either pay overage at raw API or credit rates, often with no monthly ceiling, or hit a hard request limit. Premium models and agent runs consume five to ten times the usage of autocomplete, so for agentic teams the real bill is commonly two to five times the sticker.
Which AI coding tools have no surprise overage?
Amazon Q Developer and Gemini Code Assist are hard-capped: they never bill overage, but they stop you at a daily or monthly request limit instead. That protects the budget but can block work mid-task. Most other tools bill overage at token or credit rates with no hard ceiling.
Do AI coding team seats include audit logs and SSO?
Usually not. Team and business tiers bundle a basic usage dashboard and centralized billing, but audit logs, SSO with SAML and SCIM, and per-seat spend limits are typically Enterprise-only. Kiro is an exception, including SSO and SCIM on its paid team tiers.
How we calculate true cost
For each tool we start with the official team or business seat price for your billing choice, applying any seat minimum (Claude Team bills five seats, Codex Business two). We add an estimated usage overage for your intensity, because most plans include a credit or token pool that heavy and agentic use runs through. The bold figure is the midpoint of that range; the range itself runs from the bare seat floor to a heavy-overage estimate.
Seat prices are taken from each provider official pricing page and were checked in June 2026; tap any tool name to verify. The overage band is our modelling, not a quote, and is deliberately a range rather than a single number. Tools marked est. have no public per-seat price, so we use a flagged third-party estimate. Hard-cap tools (Amazon Q, Gemini Code Assist) do not bill overage; instead they stop you at a request limit, which we flag rather than price. Bring-your-own-key tools (Cline, Tabnine) have a near-free seat, so the seat is not the cost at all: you connect your own provider key and pay that model raw API token rates. For those we price the actual token bill, using the model you pick above at its current published rate (rates for all seven providers checked June 2026) times an assumed token volume per developer (light 4M, standard 25M, heavy 150M input tokens, with proportional output). That volume is the biggest lever on a bring-your-own-key bill, which is why you can change the model and see it move. The high end of each band is the fully uncached cost; the low end assumes heavy prompt caching (which can cut input cost by up to about 90 percent).
Affiliate relationships never change the ranking. Tools are ordered purely by the modelled monthly cost for your scenario.