AI Coding Credit Burn Calculator

Direct answer

AI coding credit burn is the rate at which prompts, agent runs, retries, and team seats consume a coding tool's allowance. In the Copilot Pro+ worked example, 80 requests/day on the committed GPT-5.3 Codex row burns 46% of the $70 pool in two days, exhausts it in 4.3 days, and projects a $457 monthly bill with $418 overage.

Why this matters now

GitHub's Copilot plan page now frames paid tiers around monthly AI credit pools, making token-like burn visible to coding-agent users.

Business Insider reported one Pro+ user burning 46% of the $70 pool in two days; the same report separately cited one Pro+ user's $847 projection and a $44.68-$754.29 estimator range.

A separate Business Insider report described a $4,000-in-3-days Claude Code runaway anecdote, which is why Claude outputs here are explicitly estimated.

Example scenario

Worked example: calculateCodingCreditBurn(GitHub Copilot Pro+, openai:gpt-5.3-codex rates, PRESETS[0].workload, credit-pool, nextPlan) uses the first preset, Copilot Pro+ heavy coder. At 80 requests/day, 31,687.5 input tokens and 10,562.5 output tokens per request, the committed rates produce $16.26625/day and $488/month of API-list spend. Against the committed $70 Pro+ pool, the calculator reports 46% of the pool burned in two days, 4.3 days to exhaust, $418 projected monthly overage, and a $457 projected monthly bill.

What the inputs mean

• Seats: the number of people with access to the coding tool.
• Activity mix: chat prompts, agent runs, retries, and review loops.
• Allowance: the plan credits, request pool, or internal budget being tested.

What the result means

You get a projected burn rate, time to allowance exhaustion, and the activity type most responsible for the budget pressure.

Assumptions

• Copilot credits are modeled as a $0.01 credit pool where the committed subscription row publishes a numeric pool.
• Cursor included quota is treated as API-list-price USD when the committed plan row publishes that convention.
• Claude plans publish no numeric quota, so Claude outputs are labeled estimated and use the session-fraction method from the live calculator.
• The Business Insider $847 projection is cited as context for the preset, not fitted as a computed target.

Where the prices come from

This worked example reads the committed subscription row for GitHub Copilot Pro+ and the committed model row for openai:gpt-5.3-codex. Those records preserve official source URLs, last-checked timestamps, and confidence grades in the pricing index; the static page does not refresh or call provider APIs.

Formula and methodology

requests/day = agent sessions/day x avg requests/session. tokensIn = total tokens/request x (1 - output share). tokensOut = total tokens/request x output share; output share is a fraction from 0 to 0.95 in the core function and the UI percent control divides by 100. dailyApiSpendUsd = requests/day x (tokensIn x inputRate + tokensOut x outputRate) / 1e6. monthlySpend = dailyApiSpendUsd x working days/month. The Copilot Pro+ reported-June-2026 preset uses a 30-calendar-day month for the 46%-in-two-days user; the separately reported $847 Pro+ projection is cited as context, not a computed target. Credit-pool plans: daysToExhaust = poolUsd / dailyApiSpendUsd; projectedMonthlyOverage = max(0, monthlySpend - poolUsd). poolBurnedInTwoDaysPct is stored as a fraction, not a percent: (dailyApiSpendUsd x 2) / poolUsd, so 0.46 displays as 46%. Copilot credits are $0.01 each and Cursor included quota is API-list-price USD, so both are treated as 1:1 USD pools. Copilot legacy mode uses the dataset premium-requests-legacy tier: daysToExhaust = allowance / requestsPerDay and overage = extra monthly requests x $0.04/request when that tier is published. Claude plans publish no numeric quota. Claude days are always labeled estimated: model relative burn = per-request selected-model API cost / per-request Sonnet baseline API cost using $3 input and $15 output per 1M tokens; claudeSessionFractionPerDay = sessions/day x estimated 5-hour-session fraction/session x model relative burn; days = plan multiplier / claudeSessionFractionPerDay. Plan-vs-API always starts with stay on plan, plan + overage, and pure API. It adds one next-tier option only when the next same-product plan after the selected plan has both monthlyUsd and a numeric pool; that next tier's cost is monthlyUsd + max(0, monthlySpend - nextPool). The displayed cheapest option is the lowest monthlyUsd among those constructed options.

Interpretation guide

• Compare alternatives with the same workload assumptions.
• Stress-test output-heavy, retry-heavy, cache-miss, and power-user cases before committing budget.
• Verify source links and production logs before using the estimate for billing decisions.

Limitations before production billing decisions

Treat ByteCosts calculations as planning estimates, not final billing totals. Real invoices can differ because token mix, retry rate, cache hit rate, rate limits, taxes, gateway fees, regional pricing, and negotiated discounts change the effective cost.

Verify the provider source before production billing decisions, then compare the estimate with your own logs or invoice once production traffic is live.

Frequently asked questions

Cite this page

AI Coding Credit Burn Calculator. ByteCosts. https://bytecosts.com/tools/coding-credit-burn/

Sources

• GitHub Copilot plans
• Business Insider Copilot report
• Business Insider Claude Code report
• OpenAI pricing
• ByteCosts methodology
• ByteCosts provider pricing index

Machine-readable

• Markdown mirror