Compare GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code and OpenAI Codex per-seat cost for your team size and usage intensity — then check it against pay-as-you-go API pricing.
| Product | Recommended tier | Per seat | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub Copilot per seat / month | Pro Unlimited completions + 300 premium chat requests / month | $10 | $100 | $1200 |
| Cursor per seat / month | Pro Unlimited completions + 500 fast premium requests + unlimited slow requests | $20 | $200 | $2400 |
| Claude Code (Claude Pro / Max) per seat / month (usage window inside the plan) | Pro Claude subscription usage window shared with Claude Code | $20 | $200 | $2400 |
| OpenAI Codex included in ChatGPT plan (no standalone seat) | ChatGPT Plus Consumes the ChatGPT agentic usage limit; top up with OpenAI credits | $20 | $200 | $2400 |
| Pay-as-you-go API same assumed workload | Claude 4 Sonnet $3/1M in · $15/1M out | — | $495 | $5940 |
The real cost of a subscription is not the monthly fee — it is what happens when the quota runs out. Claude Code billed straight through the API is especially unpredictable; Cursor and Copilot premium requests throttle or convert to metered usage once exhausted. The table below gives the cheapest tier that still covers each usage intensity. The API baseline converts usage intensity into assumed token volumes — treat it as a comparison model, not a measured bill.
Every one of these products is sold as a flat per-seat subscription, so the headline number looks simple: seats × seat price. The real spend is decided by what happens when the included quota runs out, and the four products fail in different ways. Copilot and Cursor meter premium requests — once exhausted you either wait for the next cycle or degrade to a slower model. Claude Code is different in kind: it is a token-consuming agentic tool, so a heavy sprint can blow past any subscription window, and it blocks rather than silently overcharging. Codex is not a standalone subscription at all — it draws on a ChatGPT plan you may already be paying for. That is why this page reports the recommended tier and the overage risk together, and why it also prices the same workload on a pay-as-you-go API.
Two products can show the same $20 seat price and behave completely differently once the included quota is spent. The API baseline answers the separate question: would metered tokens have been cheaper?
A 10-developer team on heavy agent usage. Each developer's subscription is a flat seat fee; the alternative is metered API calls on the same workload.
Why did the cow cross the road?
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