How many tokens is 1% of your Claude Code limit?

Описание и применение

Пользователи Claude Code не могут напрямую переводить процент использования лимита в количество токенов, что затрудняет оценку расходов. Автор измерил, что 1 % лимита 5‑часового окна соответствует примерно 166 000 новым токенам или 11,2 млн кэш‑токенов, а новые токены составляют 2,5 % всех токенов, но 63 % лимита. Это позволяет оптимизировать использование субагентов, длину сессий и размер начального контекста.

Задача

Users cannot directly translate Claude Code usage percentages into token counts, making it hard to gauge how much of their token budget is consumed by different token types.

Результат

The study found that 1% of the 5‑hour limit equals roughly 166k new tokens or 11.2M cached tokens, with new tokens accounting for 2.5% of all tokens but 63% of the limit. Subagents, long sessions, and large starting contexts significantly impact token consumption.

Рабочий процесс

• 1. Record status‑line percent readings from Claude Code over time.
• 2. Extract token counts (input, cache writes, cache reads, output) from transcripts for each model call.
• 3. For each interval where the 5‑hour percent rose, compute the rise and split the tokens into new (input, cache writes, output) and cached (cache reads).
• 4. Perform a least‑squares fit (no intercept) of rise in % ≈ a × new tokens + b × cached tokens.
• 5. Derive % of the 5‑hour limit per million new and cached tokens and compute tokens per 1%.
• 6. Use the resulting ranges (≈165–200k new tokens, 10.7–11.2M cached tokens per 1%) to assess token usage.
• 7. Apply insights to optimize subagent usage, session length, and context size.
• 8. Optionally use the limitcast CLI to automate data collection and fitting.
• 9. Share findings to compare ratios across plans.

Доказательства

1% of the 5-hour limit was about 166,000 new tokens, or about 11 million cached tokens.

Источник

New tokens (input, cache writes, output) 2.5% of everything Claude Code sent, and they used about 63% of my limit.

Источник

Subagents sent about a third of my tokens (33%), but nearly half of my new tokens (48%), and used an estimated 42% of my limit.

Источник