Realistic cost estimates for agent coding — single model or mixed strategy.
Frontier for planning, daily driver for coding, cheapest for boilerplate.
| Role | Model | % | Tokens | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Planner | % | 6M | $30 | |
| Daily | % | 15M | $23 | |
| Budget | % | 9M | $1 | |
| Total | $54/mo | |||
| Model | $/1M blended | Score | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemma 4 E4B Value | $0.10 | 85 | — |
| Phi-4 Value | $0.15 | 75 | — |
| Qwen3 Coder Value | $0.23 | 80 | — |
| Llama 4 Maverick Value | $0.30 | 83 | — |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash Value | $0.40 | 85 | — |
| DeepSeek R1 Value | $0.83 | 85 | — |
| Reka Flash 3 Value | $1.00 | 30 | — |
| DeepSeek V4 Pro Mid-range | $1.50 | 90 | — |
| Gemini 3 Pro Mid-range | $2.00 | 88 | — |
| Qwen 3 Max Mid-range | $2.40 | 82 | — |
| Cohere Command R+ Mid-range | $2.50 | 70 | — |
| Mistral Large 3 Mid-range | $3.00 | 85 | — |
| GPT-5.4 Premium | $3.75 | 93 | — |
| Claude Sonnet 4 Premium | $5.00 | 93 | — |
| Grok 4 Premium | $7.00 | 85 | — |
| GPT-4.1 Mid-range | $7.60 | 81 | — |
| GPT-5.5 Pro Premium | $22.50 | 89 | — |
| Claude Opus 4 Premium | $27.00 | 90 | — |
Agent-mode estimates. A single "fix this bug" turn can burn 50K tokens. The mixed strategy splits your total tokens across three tiers.
You don't need Claude Opus for every task. A real agent setup uses 2-3 models: one for planning/architecture (expensive, smart), one for daily coding (balanced), and one for boilerplate/simple tasks (cheapest).
The mixed strategy splits your tokens 20/50/30 by default. Adjust the percentages — if you plan heavily, bump planner to 40%. If you generate lots of boilerplate, give budget 50%.