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Re:Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI sp... by liorwn on Saturday March 14, 2026 @03:26PM (#47380204)
I built this after noticing a $65 charge for what felt like a $10 session. Turns out, context compaction was hiding 80% of my token usage. Real cost, no visibility.

claudetop is a status line for Claude Code that shows your burn rate, cache efficiency, model cost comparison, and smart alerts (like "TRY /fast" when Opus is overkill for the task). Plugin system for extensibility — Spotify, CI status, calendar, etc.

Single bash script, zero dependencies beyond jq. One-command install.

Re:Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI sp... by cortesoft on Saturday March 14, 2026 @03:53PM (#47380489)
I am always a hit confused when people talk about these charges... are you not using the subscriptions with the flat rates? I am on the $100 a month plan, and am constantly using clause code and never coming close to my limits. Maybe I am just not using it at the levels of some people...
Re:Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI sp... by Gobd on Saturday March 14, 2026 @03:59PM (#47380545)
I have noticed the same with the $100/mo plan, I hit the limt only once with heavy usage. Then when I use my employer's AWS Bedrock it's not uncommon for my spend to $50/day of serious work. It doesn't make much sense.
Re:Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI sp... by sroussey on Saturday March 14, 2026 @04:07PM (#47380623)
Anthropic is subsidizing Claude Code. It makes lots of sense.
Re:Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI sp... by verdverm on Saturday March 14, 2026 @04:07PM (#47380629)
The paid plans require you to use their interfaces or tooling. The main reason I pay per token is so I have tooling freedom. I'm not keen to let Big AI decide how I interact with this game changing technology.
Re:Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI sp... by cortesoft on Saturday March 14, 2026 @04:58PM (#47381100)
I haven't yet been blocked by their tooling. All the current tools I use seem to work fine with the claude code interface, can just call it with -p.
Re:Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI sp... by copperx on Saturday March 14, 2026 @04:00PM (#47380557)
$100 is for casual usage. To use it for work requires $200/mi plus extra usage.
Re:Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI sp... by Gobd on Saturday March 14, 2026 @04:08PM (#47380643)
CC does all of my work and I have hit the $100/mo Max plan limit only once, and I probably could have just called it quits for the day at that point.
Re:Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI sp... by cortesoft on Saturday March 14, 2026 @04:55PM (#47381072)
Are you saying that is the Claude rules for the subscription or saying because work uses more of it?
Re:Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI sp... by verdverm on Saturday March 14, 2026 @04:05PM (#47380613)
I pay per token using an API (Vertex)

1. Higher limits and quota, goes up with more spend

2. I don't think it gets quant nerf's during busy times, since you are paying directly

3. With Gemini flash + CC prompts, it's nearly as good, so less spend and latency. I don't know how people deal with the delays between turns. I get to iterate much faster for most tasks

Re:Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI sp... by cortesoft on Saturday March 14, 2026 @04:57PM (#47381091)
I don't seem to have any delays between turns with my Claude subscription, so not sure what you mean there.

Your second point seems like a guess.

For your first point, I bumped to the $100 plan because i was hitting limits with the $20 one, but haven't hit the limit with the new one yet...

Re:Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI sp... by verdverm on Sunday March 15, 2026 @04:03PM (#47391294)
I mean the 10-30s to wait for a frontier model to respond when the lite/flash models are just fine for almost all tasks
Re:Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI sp... by MattGaiser on Saturday March 14, 2026 @04:04PM (#47380605)
How many agents are you using at once?
Re:Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI sp... by h1r1ms on Saturday March 14, 2026 @04:14PM (#47380707)
Re:Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI sp... by cortesoft on Saturday March 14, 2026 @04:54PM (#47381060)
3 or 4? Plus whatever sub agents they spawn...
Re:Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI sp... by jakeinspace on Saturday March 14, 2026 @04:00PM (#47380554)
Please type things yourself. Or at least prompt your LLM of choice to sound less canned.
Re:Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI sp... by CubsFan1060 on Saturday March 14, 2026 @04:07PM (#47380624)
41 minute old account. "I built post". LLM sounding everything. I'd be surprised if there was a real person behind this at all.
Re:Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI sp... by brikym on Saturday March 14, 2026 @05:45PM (#47381566)
/authentic-writer skill: No em dashes or emojis. add in a few typos and bad grammmer. Avoid it's not not X but Y. imagine you're a mere human and your pinky finger is very tired so you forget to uppercase sometimes.
Re:Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI sp... by sneak on Saturday March 14, 2026 @04:20PM (#47380754)
I believe there is a new HN guideline asking people not to post AI slop as comments.
Re:Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI sp... by Self-Perfection on Saturday March 14, 2026 @05:02PM (#47381129)
> like "TRY /fast" when Opus is overkill for the task

In fact using /fast in this case would only increase spending. /fast mode uses the same opus but consumes $$$$ faster to produce tokens faster )

https://code.claude.com/docs/en/fast-mode

Re:Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI sp... by js2 on Saturday March 14, 2026 @07:32PM (#47382459)
I asked Claude Opus yesterday if it could put my token cost (and tokens remaining) into the status bar and it insisted there was no way to get this information.

ETA: ah, this isn't getting real time cost from an Anthropic API or anything. It's estimating it based on token usage and a JSON config file that specifies token cost.