Coding Agent Cost per Task

Coding-agent cost per task is the useful workflow unit when the real question is how much one accepted patch, review, migration step, or automation output costs after retries and review.

Question

How do I calculate coding agent cost per accepted task?

Quick answer

Formula: accepted_tasks_monthly = active_workers * accepted_tasks_per_worker_month

Formula: task_attempts_monthly = accepted_tasks_monthly / acceptance_rate

Formula: cost_per_accepted_task = (subscription + api_model + local_fallback + infra) / accepted_tasks_monthly

Assumption: accepted tasks are outputs that survive review, tests, or human acceptance.
Assumption: API lane cost comes from model requests, input tokens, and output tokens.
Assumption: local fallback is runtime cost per task attempt, not a token-priced model row.

Example: if 140 tasks are accepted from 194 attempts and total monthly agent cost is $827, cost per accepted task is about $5.91.

Scenario Table

Scenario	What changes	Expected effect
Lower acceptance	More attempts are needed per accepted task	Cost per accepted task rises even when model price stays flat
More API overflow	Task attempts shift from subscription lane into token-priced API usage	Monthly spend becomes more sensitive to model and prompt size
Higher local fallback share	Runtime minutes and hourly worker cost drive the fallback lane	Token price matters less than utilization and machine cost

Where This Fits

Use Coding Agent Cost per Task when you are pricing useful outputs or setting stop conditions. Use AI Coding Agent Cost when the budget owner needs a developer-month view. Use AI Coding Plan Comparison when the decision is the fixed-plan buying lane.

Run the Task Cost Tool

Model accepted-task cost across subscription, API, local fallback, acceptance rate, and infra assumptions.

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