Claude token budget cheat sheet
Context windows, prices, cache math, and payload sizes — one page, ready to print.
Figure: token-budget cheat sheet. SVG is open for reuse under CC BY 4.0 — credit claude-cost-calc.vercel.app.
How to plan a session in 30 seconds
- 1. Estimate input. Sum the system prompt + repo files + chat history. Each page of text ≈ 650 tokens.
- 2. Estimate output. Default cap is 8,192 tokens — most code-gen replies sit under 2,000.
- 3. Apply the cache. If the prefix is stable across calls, only the first call pays full input.
- 4. Pick the cheapest passing model. Run your eval set on Haiku first, escalate to Sonnet, then Opus.
Open the cost calculator →
Image license: CC BY 4.0. Confirm rates against Anthropic's pricing page before invoicing.