What is the cheapest Claude API for Cursor and Claude Code?

Last updated October 26, 2026 by the APIClaw team

For heavy daily use, APIClaw is a cheap Claude API for Cursor and Claude Code: $19 a month covers 250 Claude Sonnet calls a day, and $39 covers 500. There is no per-token bill. At low volume, a few dozen modest calls a day, per-token billing is often cheaper than $19.

Why agent usage is expensive per token

Claude Code and Cursor agent mode resend the whole conversation on every turn. One turn near the end of a long session can carry tens of thousands of input tokens even when the model writes only a short reply. Per-token billing charges for all of those input tokens each time, so a coding day costs far more than the number of messages suggests.

APIClaw avoids that by billing requests. You pick a plan, you get a daily request quota that resets at 00:00 UTC, and the size of each request does not change the price. Heavier models count as more requests: Claude Sonnet 5.5 counts as 2, and Claude Opus 5.5 counts as 3.

Which plan fits your Claude Sonnet usage

Plans are billed every 30 days and can be cancelled any time. Because Claude Sonnet 5.5 has a weight of 2, divide the daily request quota by 2 to get Sonnet calls a day.

Three worked examples, each over a 30-day month:

At 250 calls a day you use the entire Plus quota, so leave yourself headroom on heavy days or take Pro. Above 8,000 requests a day, ask for a custom plan on Telegram support.

The same usage at per-token prices

Anthropic's per-token price for Claude Sonnet 5.5 is $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, as listed on the Claude pricing page. To compare, we need an assumption for how big an agent call is.

Assumption for this page: an average agent turn sends 40,000 input tokens and receives 1,500 output tokens. That is an illustration, not a measurement. Real turns range from a few thousand tokens in a fresh session to several hundred thousand late in a long one. The figures below also ignore prompt caching, which can lower per-token cost if your tools use it.

Cost of one turn: 40,000 input tokens at $2 per million is $0.08, and 1,500 output tokens at $10 per million is $0.015. That totals $0.095 a call.

Under those assumptions, the flat plans come out well ahead at these volumes. If your turns are much smaller, the gap narrows. A short chat call of 2,000 input and 500 output tokens costs about $0.009, so 100 of them a day is roughly $27 a month, more than the $19 Plus plan but close.

When per-token billing is cheaper

Be honest with yourself about volume. At low volume, a few dozen modest calls a day, per-token billing is often cheaper than $19 a month. Under the 40,000-token assumption, break-even with the Plus plan is about 7 calls a day. With small calls it is around 70 a day. If you code with Claude a couple of times a week, pay per token.

Flat pricing wins when usage is heavy, regular and context-hungry, which describes most people who run an agent for hours each day. The OpenRouter alternative guide covers the same trade-off against a per-token router, including its credit fee.

Set up Claude Code

Claude Code uses the Anthropic Messages format, so the base URL has no /v1. Edit ~/.claude/settings.json (on Windows, %USERPROFILE%\.claude\settings.json):

{
  "env": {
    "ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL": "https://apiclaw.biz",
    "ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN": "sk-your-apiclaw-key",
    "ANTHROPIC_MODEL": "claude-sonnet-5-5",
    "CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_NONESSENTIAL_TRAFFIC": "1"
  }
}

More options are in the Claude Code setup guide.

Set up Cursor

Cursor takes an OpenAI-style base URL. Open Cursor settings and follow these steps:

Settings, then Models
OpenAI API Key: your APIClaw key
Override OpenAI Base URL: https://apiclaw.biz/v1
Add Custom Model: apiclaw/claude-sonnet-5-5
Turn Auto off

In Cursor, model IDs take the apiclaw/ prefix, so Claude Sonnet 5.5 is apiclaw/claude-sonnet-5-5. For agent mode, use https://apiclaw.biz/cursor as the base URL. The Cursor setup guide has screenshots and the agent-mode details.

Working out your own numbers

The tables above rest on one assumption, so replace it with your own. Open your current usage page, whether that is Anthropic's console or a router dashboard, and find the average input and output tokens per call for a normal day. Multiply input tokens by $2 and divide by a million, then do the same for output tokens at $10, and add the two. That is your per-token cost per call.

Next, multiply by your calls a day and by 30. Compare the monthly figure with the plan that fits your daily request count. If the per-token number is lower, stay on per-token billing. If it is several times higher, a flat plan will probably save money. Remember to count each Claude Sonnet 5.5 call as 2 requests when you pick the plan, and each Claude Opus 5.5 call as 3.

The free trial helps here. It gives 50 requests, which is 25 Sonnet calls, enough to see how large your real turns are before you spend anything.

Make the quota go further

Use weight-1 models for routine work. DeepSeek V4 Pro and DeepSeek V4 Flash each count as 1 request, half the cost of Sonnet in quota terms, and are well suited to renames, boilerplate and test scaffolding. Save Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Claude Opus 5.5 for design and tricky debugging. The DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi and GLM guide lists the alternatives.

Check the model hub for the current weight of each model, and read Claude Code without rate limits to understand how the daily reset behaves.

Cursor and Claude Code on one plan

Many developers use both tools: Cursor for inline edits and chat, Claude Code for longer terminal sessions. Both draw from the same daily request quota on one key, so you do not need two subscriptions. Split the quota in your head. If you expect 150 Sonnet calls in Cursor and 100 in Claude Code on a typical day, that is 250 calls, or 500 requests, which is exactly the Plus allowance, and the Pro plan gives comfortable room.

Check where your calls go during the first week. Agent modes tend to use many more calls than chat, because every file read and edit is its own request. If most of your usage is agent work, size the plan by turns, not by prompts you typed.

What to know before you buy

APIClaw is an independent gateway and is not affiliated with Anthropic, OpenAI, Google or Cursor. It routes requests to models available through publicly available sources and provider APIs. Payment is by crypto through NOWPayments, with no card. The free trial gives 50 requests with no card, so you can sign up and measure your own call sizes before you commit. See the comparison pages for how it stacks up against other options.