This lesson's overpays hide behind good reasons. "Use the best model for code" sounds prudent. "Get the business plan for the team" sounds responsible. Both are sometimes right, and the way to know is to price the actual work.
Scenario 3: the developer on Opus 5 for boilerplate
Priya generates about 2,000 routine snippets a month: test scaffolds, data classes, config files, docstrings. Each call is roughly 2,000 input tokens and 800 output. She runs them all on Claude Opus 5 ($5 in / $25 out per 1M) because it is the best model, and a test suite catches anything wrong.
Which would you trust?
Which is the cheapest model that still does Priya's job?
Scenario 4: five people, Plus seats or Business?
| Option | Monthly | What you get | When it is the right answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 × Plus | $100 | Five separate accounts, personal billing, consumer data terms | Everyone uses it, nobody needs admin, and the company is comfortable with consumer terms |
| 5 × Business | $125 | Shared workspace, admin controls, business data terms (not used for training by default), central invoice | The company needs the data terms or the admin controls; that is a real feature, not a badge |
| 3 × Plus | $60 | Same as row one, for the three people who actually use it | The honest answer for most five-person teams once you check usage |
Verdict: the question is not Plus versus Business. It is how many of the five use it weekly, and whether the company needs Business's data terms. If two of the five opened it twice in March, the cheapest plan that does the job is three Plus seats at $60, not five of anything. If the company needs business data terms, Business at $25 a seat is the cheapest plan that does *that* job, and the $5 a seat is well spent; buy it for the three active users, not five. Business is also $20 a seat if billed annually, which closes the gap entirely for a stable team.