Claude Code vs Cursor vs Copilot vs Gemini CLI: what will you actually pay?

Because its free tier isn't small: signing in with a personal Google account gets you 60 requests a minute and 1,000 a day, no card required. This tool models one Claude Code "session" as roughly 20 turns, so even a heavy day of 12 sessions works out to about 240 requests - still well under the daily cap. It only tips into paid API billing once your request count actually clears 1,000 in a day.

Because Cursor doesn't publish one. Its pricing page states every plan "includes a set amount of model usage" without a dollar figure, and only says Pro Plus carries roughly 3x Pro's agent limits and Ultra roughly 20x. This tool matches your workload tier straight to that published ladder - Light to Pro, Medium to Pro Plus, Heavy to Ultra - rather than inventing a number Cursor itself hasn't shared.

Copilot is the one competitor here that does price its allowance in dollars: Pro ($10/mo) carries $15/mo in AI credits, Pro+ ($39/mo) carries $70, and Max ($100/mo) carries $200. This tool prices your pattern's raw token volume at Claude Sonnet 5's published API rate as a stand-in for "real frontier-model spend" (Copilot has no public per-token card of its own), then picks the cheapest Copilot tier whose credit pool covers that number.

It's a modeled estimate from each vendor's own published pricing page, not a reading of your real usage - and it can't be, since Cursor and Copilot bill against private, per-model credit consumption this tool has no access to. Claude Code and Gemini CLI's numbers are the most exact because both publish real per-token API rates. For your actual Claude Code number, run the free UsageCut scan, which reads your real session history instead of a modeled pattern.

Because at low usage, metered API billing is often cheaper than a flat $20-$200/mo plan - the calculator always shows whichever number is actually lower for your pattern, the same logic behind the plain Claude Code cost calculator.

Yes. The scan and every fix are free - no card, no subscription, no signup. You only give an email if you want the optimization plan and one-command undo sent to your inbox.

The scan runs entirely on your machine. It never uploads your code, never reads your API key, and never sends your prompts or conversations anywhere. Only anonymous summary counts leave, and only if you choose to share them.

It reads your local setup and session history to find waste - idle MCP servers loaded into every session, an oversized CLAUDE.md re-sent on every request, duplicate file reads, and bloated tool output - then trims it losslessly, so each session carries less context and you hit your limit far less often.

ClockedCode is the curated, conflict-free Claude Code setup from the same maker. UsageCut makes your current setup leaner; ClockedCode makes it genuinely better - a set of hand-picked tools, specialist agents, and a tuned CLAUDE.md, installed in one paste.

Developers who use Claude Code daily and want a setup that is powerful out of the box instead of spending hours researching and wiring up plugins, agents, and MCP servers themselves.

A vetted, conflict-free bundle of hand-picked tools, specialist agents, and a tuned CLAUDE.md - everything installed together in one paste, with no setup archaeology.

Yes. ClockedCode is a one-time purchase with an instant download - no subscription and no recurring fees.

Yes. It installs alongside what you already have and is fully reversible. Run UsageCut first to clean your current setup, then add ClockedCode to level it up.