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Token Cost Estimator

Estimate Anthropic / OpenAI API costs for a given workflow before you spend a dollar — with cache & model comparison.

/token-cost

Install this skill

  1. 1. Copy the SKILL.md content (button above)
  2. 2. Create a folder for the skill:
    # Mac/Linux
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/token-cost

# Windows (PowerShell)
mkdir $env:USERPROFILE\.claude\skills\token-cost
  3. 3. Save the content as ~/.claude/skills/token-cost/SKILL.md
  4. 4. Restart Claude Code (or open a new session)
  5. 5. Type /token-cost to invoke it
llmcostanthropicopenaitokens

/token-cost

Know what you'll spend before you spend it.

Usage

/token-cost src/lib/agents/researcher.ts # analyzes a code path /token-cost --prompt @prompt.txt --runs 1000 # one prompt × N runs /token-cost --conversation @chat.jsonl # multi-turn estimate

What it estimates

Per call

  • Input tokens (system + history + user message)
  • Output tokens (estimated based on max_tokens and historical avg)
  • Cache hit rate (if cache_control is used in the prompt)
  • Total cost in USD

For a workflow

  • Cost per user invocation
  • Cost at 1k / 10k / 100k users/month
  • Cost breakdown by model (Opus vs Sonnet vs Haiku)
  • "What if we switched to Haiku?" comparison

Pricing source

  • Anthropic: live from anthropic.com/pricing (or hardcoded fallback)
  • OpenAI: openai.com/pricing
  • Includes prompt caching discounts (10% read / 25% write surcharge per Anthropic)

Output

Workflow: stack planner (one user request) Model: claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 Input: ~3,200 tokens Output: ~1,800 tokens Cost: $0.0034 per request At scale: 1,000 requests/day: $3.40/day · $102/month 10,000 requests/day: $34/day · $1,020/month Switching to Sonnet 4.6: ~5x cost, marginal quality gain Switching to Opus 4.7: ~30x cost, recommended for complex reasoning only

Rules

  • Use real tokenizers when possible (tiktoken for OpenAI, Anthropic's tokenizer SDK)
  • If estimating, conservatively round UP (it's worse to underbudget)
  • Surface caching opportunities — long system prompts that aren't cached
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