Token Budgets for Real Projects: How I Keep AI Costs Under $50/Month

AI coding assistants are useful. They're also expensive if you're not paying attention. I was spending $120/month before I started tracking. Now I spend under $50 for the same (honestly, better) output. Here's the system. The Problem: Invisible Costs Most developers don't track AI token usage. They paste code, get results, paste more code. Each interaction costs money, but the feedback loop is delayed — you see the bill at the end of the month. The biggest cost drivers aren't the prompts. They're the context. A typical AI coding session: System prompt: ~500 tokens Your context (project files, examples): ~2,000-8,000 tokens Your actual question: ~200 tokens AI response: ~500-2,000 tokens That context window is 80% of your bill. And most of it is the same information you send every time. The Token Budget System Rule 1: Set a Daily Cap I budget $2/day for AI coding assistance. That's ~$50/month with weekends off. When I hit the cap, I code without AI for the rest of the day. (Spoiler: I'm