JOHNISKING/claude-effort-cost

Claude effort levels: tokens, time and cost for the same coding task

The same coding prompt run at each effort level in Claude Code 2.1.295: Claude Opus 5.5 at low, medium, high, xhigh and max, Claude Sonnet 5.5 at medium and high (three runs each, 2026-10-23) and Claude Haiku 5.5 at all five levels (three runs each, 2026-10-21). The first single runs of Opus and Sonnet (2026-10-09, earlier Claude Code version, ccusage) are kept for comparison.

Headline (v3, 2026-10-23, average of 3 runs): Opus 5.5 cost $0.17 at low, $0.26 at medium, $0.35 at high, $0.82 at xhigh and $5.33 at max; Sonnet 5.5 $0.10 at medium and $0.12 at high. Low to xhigh cost 40% to 64% less than the first single runs on an earlier Claude Code version. All 21 new games passed a scripted play test.

• Source page, chart and method: https://tokensave.app/data/claude-effort-cost
• DOI (Zenodo): 10.5281/zenodo.23446567
• Also on: Hugging Face · Kaggle
• Measured: 2026-10-23 (Opus, Sonnet, 3 runs per level), 2026-10-21 (Haiku 5.5); first Opus/Sonnet runs 2026-10-09
• License: CC BY 4.0

Key findings

• Low and medium are close: low cost 33% less ($0.17 vs $0.26) and took 29 s instead of 51 s.
• High is the best value step: output tokens rose 57% but cost only 37% more, because most of each request is unchanged input.
• Costs jump from xhigh: xhigh cost 221% more than medium and max 1,991% more. Max took 24 min 43 s on average.
• Sonnet 5.5 used 36% fewer output tokens than Opus 5.5 at the same effort and cost 62% less at medium and 67% less at high.
• First measurement (2026-10-09, one run per level): Opus $0.48 / $0.56 / $0.75 / $1.36 / $5.25, Sonnet $0.25 / $0.30. See the comparison table on the source page.
• Haiku 5.5 (average of 3 runs): $0.0095 at low, $0.0142 medium, $0.0205 high, $0.0388 xhigh, $0.38 max. Max cost 869% more than xhigh because Haiku wrote and ran its own test script (15 turns instead of 4); at max it cost 120% more than Opus 5.5 at low in the new runs.
• All 15 Haiku games passed a scripted play test (score, level 2, three lives) at every level. Higher effort wrote longer code (334 lines at low, 661 at max), not more working games.

Files

• claude-effort-cost.csv: one row per run with model, effort, run, seconds, output_tokens, total_tokens, cost_usd, code_lines
• claude-effort-cost.json: the same data plus the exact prompt
• opus-sonnet-2026-10-23/: the 21 new Opus and Sonnet runs (index.html, raw run.jsonl with the Windows user name masked as USER, seconds.txt).
• scripts/: game checker (check_brick_deep_i18n_state.py) and the score probe used for one game whose score label the checker could not read.
• haiku-5-5-games/: the 15 games Haiku 5.5 wrote (<effort>_<run>.html), and run_effort.py, the script that ran them

Data (first single runs and Haiku; all runs are in the CSV)

Model	Effort	Time	Output tokens	Total tokens	Cost (USD)	Lines of code
Opus 5.5	low	32 s	3,368	129,315	0.48	138
Opus 5.5	medium	52 s	6,299	133,428	0.56	358
Opus 5.5	high	1 min 50 s	12,376	222,854	0.75	523
Opus 5.5	xhigh	4 min 32 s	32,435	472,082	1.36	639
Opus 5.5	max	22 min 22 s	160,033	2,504,957	5.25	1,121
Sonnet 5.5	medium	37 s	4,100	115,073	0.25	198
Sonnet 5.5	high	58 s	8,073	137,593	0.30	398
Haiku 5.5	low (run 1)	26 s	6,020	82,172	0.0090	323
Haiku 5.5	low (run 2)	39 s	9,188	61,611	0.0087	364
Haiku 5.5	low (run 3)	50 s	11,730	99,717	0.0108	314
Haiku 5.5	medium (run 1)	1 min 4 s	14,459	72,134	0.0146	374
Haiku 5.5	medium (run 2)	1 min 2 s	15,300	73,803	0.0129	396
Haiku 5.5	medium (run 3)	1 min 18 s	18,610	80,368	0.0152	388
Haiku 5.5	high (run 1)	1 min 54 s	29,607	102,351	0.0252	488
Haiku 5.5	high (run 2)	1 min 32 s	22,271	131,271	0.0183	458
Haiku 5.5	high (run 3)	1 min 29 s	22,171	124,453	0.0181	492
Haiku 5.5	xhigh (run 1)	3 min 17 s	50,173	143,409	0.0373	628
Haiku 5.5	xhigh (run 2)	3 min 12 s	46,376	268,585	0.0359	574
Haiku 5.5	xhigh (run 3)	3 min 40 s	56,164	309,164	0.0431	577
Haiku 5.5	max (run 1)	9 min 51 s	148,195	2,073,976	0.39	707
Haiku 5.5	max (run 2)	9 min 7 s	130,973	2,156,518	0.38	603
Haiku 5.5	max (run 3)	9 min 6 s	131,693	1,921,233	0.36	674

Method

1. Prompt: "Make a brick-breaker game that runs in the browser as a single file named index.html in the current folder. It needs 2 levels, a score display and 3 lives, and it must be playable with the keyboard and the mouse. Write the file and finish."
2. Run in Claude Code (claude -p --effort …), each in its own empty folder. Haiku 5.5: Claude Code 2.1.295, no MCP servers, three runs per level, tokens and cost from Claude Code's own usage report at list prices; each game played by a script in a headless browser.
3. Tokens and cost from ccusage at API prices; time from start and end timestamps; lines counted in the finished index.html.
4. All seven games ran without errors and had every requested feature.

Limitations

• One run per level for Opus and Sonnet, three for Haiku, and one task. Runs vary, especially at higher effort; treat the numbers as an order of magnitude.
• Costs are API-equivalent. On a Pro or Max plan the same runs use up the usage limit instead.
• The max run tried to run an automated test that needed permission, which added time.

Citation

TokenSave (2026). Claude effort levels: tokens, time and cost for the same coding task [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23446567

Estimate coding agent costs at tokensave.app.