Market forces and dog-fooding dynamics make CC not even try to save tokens. Cursor and Windsurf have repo indexing, but the devs of CC get all the tokens for free. They are not paying for this, they are not focused on limiting cost. CC is all in-context. Only recently have they started to try to cut down on prompt context length, when needed. Background: I started with the first agentic dev tool + Sonnet 3.5, aka Windsurf. I have spent the last year creating a niche SaaS. I have paid users. Claude models changed my life. I love Anthropic. Now, the entire planet is all hot on CC, I keep hearing about people running out of tokens on Anthropic $200/month plans. However, I just had to put together a reimbursement spreadsheet based on my Apple Wallet charges from Windsurf. Over 14 months, I worked 10 to 12 hours a day, and my spreadsheet total is $637.12. I use CC as well on my Pro plan, just to keep up. It does nothing better in my workflow, in fact it is often deficient compared to Windsurf. However, I am too busy shipping really cool features to just sit around playing with my tools, so maybe I am missing something. Hot take summary: Anthropic models are the best, IME Windsurf is >10x cheaper than CC. We have now come to the end of my rant/share. Would love to discuss. submitted by /u/LordLederhosen
Originally posted by u/LordLederhosen on r/ClaudeCode