Study finds Claude Code uses 33k tokens upfront vs OpenCode's 7k before reading prompt
A small empirical study compared token usage between Claude Code and OpenCode, two agentic AI coding tools that both use Anthropic's API. Researchers added logging between the tools and Anthropic's endpoint to capture all requests and usage data after noticing Claude Code was draining usage credits far faster than OpenCode. The findings showed Claude Code sends approximately 33,000 tokens before even reading the user's prompt, compared to just 7,000 for OpenCode. This difference was attributed to Claude Code's less efficient cache strategy and higher harness token overhead. The study suggests users relying on Claude Code may face significantly higher API costs for equivalent tasks.
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