Your AI-coding budget just got a lot more complicated
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AI coding tool costs are rising sharply as agentic workflows consume far more tokens than traditional chat-based interactions. Vendors like GitHub Copilot, OpenAI Codex, Cursor, and Windsurf have moved from flat subscriptions to token-based billing, introduced usage multipliers, and tightened rate limits. Internal data suggests GitHub Copilot's serving costs have nearly doubled since January 2025. Engineering managers now face a choice between absorbing higher cloud AI costs or shifting to local LLM inference, while also needing to justify AI spend with concrete ROI rather than anecdotal productivity gains.
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