Coding assistant for a team: what it costs and which AI to use
Chat, edits and explanations inside the editor for a small engineering team, billed by the token. Teams that wire an API key into their editor or run an in-house coding assistant instead of buying seats.
The short answer
At 4,400 requests a month, we estimate $4.12 on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (the cheapest model that cleared our quality bar), $35.29 on Kimi K2.6, and $281 on GPT-5.5. The flagship costs 8x the middle pick. Judged on code-fix, SQL and reasoning tasks: a wrong edit costs engineer time, so the bar is high.
Simulate your coding assistant for a team
Pick a job, set how much of it you do, and see what every model would cost. Defaults are typical, not yours. Change them.
Prompt, history, documents
What the model writes
Advanced: caching, reasoning, retries, discounts
Share that can use cached-input prices where a model offers them
1 = none. 2 = hidden thinking doubles billed output
Extra calls on top of the base count
Batch jobs or committed spend. Check your provider; we assume none by default
Only used to compare with per-seat plans
Lowest benchmark score a model can have and still be picked. Higher is stricter.
Limit to certain providers
Untick any provider you cannot use, for data-residency, contract or policy reasons. Picks are recalculated.
4,400 requests a month, three ways to pay
Every model here cleared a score of 9.4 out of 10 on our code fix, sql, reasoning benchmark tasks, ran without errors and fits a 128K-token window. 27 of 386 priced models qualify.
Cheapest model that clears the bar.
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
- Per request
- $0.0009
- Benchmark
- 9.56 / 10 · 9 prompts
- Context
- 1.05M tokens
Priced near the middle of the models that clear the bar; best score there.
Kimi K2.6
- Per request
- $0.0080
- Benchmark
- 10.00 / 10 · 9 prompts
- Context
- 262K tokens
What many people reach for first.
GPT-5.5
- Per request
- $0.064
- Benchmark
- 9.56 / 10 · 9 prompts
- Context
- 1.05M tokens
Choosing GPT-5.5 over Kimi K2.6 costs $245 more a month, $2,945 a year (8x the price).
On our benchmark the middle pick scored higher (10.00 against 9.56). The extra money buys safety margin our benchmark cannot measure: it is 24 short prompts, and most passing models score near the top. If a wrong answer is costly for you, that margin can be worth it. Test on your own data before you decide.
If it grows
Pay-per-use cost scales in a straight line. Monthly cost at 1x, 3x, 10x and 100x today's volume.
| Model | 1x · 4,400 | 3x · 13K | 10x · 44K | 100x · 440K |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | $4.12 | $12.37 | $41.24 | $412 |
| Kimi K2.6 | $35.29 | $106 | $353 | $3,529 |
| GPT-5.5 | $281 | $842 | $2,807 | $28,072 |
What a budget buys
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash107Krequests a month, about 3,556 a day
- Kimi K2.612Krequests a month, about 415 a day
- GPT-5.51,567requests a month, about 52 a day
Or a flat monthly plan
When people use the output directly, a per-seat plan can beat paying by the token. Totals are for 5 people. Plans have usage caps that change, so check the current limits.
- Cursor Plus$40.00 a month ($8.00 each)Paying per use on Kimi K2.6 costs the same above about 4,987 requests a month. You do 4,400, so per-use is cheaper at these numbers.
- Claude Code$100 a month ($20.00 each)Paying per use on Kimi K2.6 costs the same above about 12K requests a month. You do 4,400, so per-use is cheaper at these numbers.
- Claude Pro$100 a month ($20.00 each)Paying per use on Kimi K2.6 costs the same above about 12K requests a month. You do 4,400, so per-use is cheaper at these numbers.
- Cursor Pro (legacy)$100 a month ($20.00 each)Paying per use on Kimi K2.6 costs the same above about 12K requests a month. You do 4,400, so per-use is cheaper at these numbers.
Every model, priced for your workload
41 models, 45 hidden because their window is smaller than 128K tokens.
| Model | A month | Per request | Benchmark | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 DeepSeekbelow the bar | $3.17 | $0.0007 | 9.11 (9) | 1.05M |
| Ministral 3 8B 2512 Mistral AIbelow the bar | $4.07 | $0.0009 | 6.33 (9) | 262K |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash DeepSeekBudget pick | $4.12 | $0.0009 | 9.56 (9) | 1.05M |
| Llama 4 Scout Metabelow the bar | $4.74 | $0.0011 | 8.00 (9) | 1.31M |
| Qwen3.8 Flash Alibaba | $5.94 | $0.0014 | 10.00 (9) | 1M |
| GLM 5.3 Flash Z Aibelow the bar | $6.39 | $0.0015 | 9.00 (9) | 1.05M |
| Mistral Small 4 Mistral AI | $6.68 | $0.0015 | 9.89 (9) | 262K |
| GLM 5.3 Z Ai | $10.82 | $0.0025 | 9.89 (9) | 1.05M |
| MiniMax M2.5 Minimax | $11.33 | $0.0026 | 10.00 (9) | 205K |
| GPT-5.4 Nano OpenAI | $11.52 | $0.0026 | 9.89 (9) | 400K |
| Muse Glimmer 30B Meta | $13.55 | $0.0031 | 9.67 (9) | 131K |
| MiniMax M2.7 Minimax | $13.94 | $0.0032 | 9.67 (9) | 205K |
Benchmark = mean judge score out of 10 on the code fix, sql, reasoning prompts of the Model Playground, with the number of prompts in brackets. Models marked n/a have no benchmark run, so we do not guess their quality. How the benchmark works.
What we assumed
- Five developers, about 40 requests a day each, 22 working days: 4,400 requests a month.
- Each request sends about 8,000 tokens of code and chat and gets about 1,200 tokens back.
- Half of the input (open files and project instructions) repeats and can be cached.
- 10% extra calls for retries and tool loops.
These are typical numbers, not measurements of your business. Edit them in the simulator above.
What drives the cost
Each request ships large chunks of your code as context, and agent-style edits loop several times.
Watch out for
- Per-seat plans such as Claude Pro cap heavy use; raw API keys have no cap. Cursor Premium bills Claude and GPT at API list price on top of the seat, so set its monthly spend limit. One runaway agent loop can cost more than a month of seats.
- The benchmark here uses short single-file tasks. Long multi-file edits are harder than anything we scored, so treat quality as a floor, not a guarantee.
Questions people ask
How much will coding assistant for a team cost per month?
At 4,400 requests a month, we estimate $4.12 a month on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, the cheapest model that clears our quality bar for this job. Kimi K2.6 costs $35.29 and GPT-5.5 costs $281. These are estimates from the assumptions listed on this page, not a quote. Change the numbers to match your own volume.
What is the cheapest AI model for coding assistant for a team?
On current OpenRouter prices, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash from DeepSeek is the cheapest model that cleared our bar of 9.4 out of 10, scoring 9.6/10 on 9 benchmark prompts for this kind of work. The benchmark is small, so treat it as a shortlist and test on your own data before switching.
Is it worth paying for a flagship model for coding assistant for a team?
On our benchmark, GPT-5.5 scored 9.6/10 on this kind of work, and a model priced near the middle of the models that cleared the bar, Kimi K2.6, scored 10.0/10, while the flagship costs 8x as much. A flagship buys safety margin the benchmark cannot measure. If a wrong answer is expensive for you, that can be worth paying for. If not, you are probably overpaying.
What happens to the cost if coding assistant for a team grows ten times?
Pay-per-use pricing scales in a straight line, so ten times the requests is ten times the bill. Use the growth table on this page to see 3x, 10x and 100x for the same three models.
What makes coding assistant for a team expensive?
Each request ships large chunks of your code as context, and agent-style edits loop several times.
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