>AI Coding Usage Statistics

Based on data from 48 developers on clawdboard, the average estimated AI coding usage cost is $3.2k total (not per month). The median is $2.0k, meaning half of developers spend less than that. These are estimated API-equivalent costs — most developers pay flat monthly fees through provider subscriptions, not per-token billing.

Model popularity varies over time as providers release new versions. Check the Model Popularity chart above for the latest breakdown by cost share and user count. Among Claude models, Sonnet tends to see the highest volume due to its speed-to-quality ratio, while Opus accounts for a significant share of total spend due to higher per-token pricing. OpenAI models like GPT-4o and o-series are also tracked for Codex CLI and OpenCode users.

Every data point comes from developers who voluntarily track their AI coding usage through clawdboard. The clawdboard CLI reads local log files from supported tools (Claude Code, OpenCode, Codex CLI) on each developer's machine, extracts aggregate token counts and cost estimates, and syncs them. No code, prompts, project names, or conversation content is ever collected — only token counts and estimated costs.

Cost estimates are calculated by multiplying token counts (input, output, cache creation, cache read) by published API rates for each model (Anthropic, OpenAI, etc.). They represent the equivalent API cost — not an actual bill. Since most developers use AI coding tools through subscriptions with flat monthly pricing, the actual amount paid is typically lower than the estimated API-equivalent cost shown here.

Individual developers sync their usage every 2 hours by default. The aggregate statistics on this page are recalculated hourly. The data covers all usage since January 2024.

A streak counts consecutive calendar days where a developer used AI coding tools at least once. Missing a single day resets the streak. The longest active streak in the community is currently 37 days. You can see individual streaks on the leaderboard and profile pages.

Yes. clawdboard provides a free public API at https://clawdboard.ai/api/stats that returns community-wide aggregate statistics including total spend, token counts, model breakdowns, and methodology notes. The API is rate-limited to 15 requests per minute and returns JSON. The leaderboard API at https://clawdboard.ai/api/leaderboard is also public.

No. This is a self-selected sample of developers who choose to track and share their usage on clawdboard. It likely skews toward heavier users and early adopters. It should not be interpreted as representative of all AI coding tool users, but it does provide the largest public dataset of real AI coding usage patterns available.