I tracked what AI tools actually charge. The markup is wild.
A Cyfrin engineering analysis ran a simple experiment: fix a one-character typo — "applicasion" to "application" — using an AI coding agent. The agent opened an issue, posted a checklist comment, created a branch, committed the fix, and opened a pull request. Total token consumption: over 21,000 input tokens. Total cost at API rates: about $0.32. That is not a complex refactor. That is the overhead of an unguided workflow applied to a trivial task.
Credits obscure real cost
Most AI coding platforms do not charge in dollars — they charge in credits. A task that costs $0.03 in raw API tokens might consume one credit priced at $0.25 or more. You never see the exchange rate because the abstraction is the product. Over the course of an MVP build spanning 15 to 30 sessions, that markup compounds quietly. The Cyfrin analysis found that 80% of tokens in a typical agent workflow are overhead — context handling and orchestration, not the actual task. Credit pricing puts a multiplier on top of that overhead.
BYOK eliminates the abstraction
Bring Your Own Key means you connect your API keys from Anthropic, OpenAI, or any supported provider and pay the provider directly at their published rates. No credit conversion, no hidden multipliers, no abstraction layer between you and your costs. You see exactly what each session costs, in dollars, as it runs. When you know the real price of a prompt, you make sharper decisions about scope — and that changes how you build.
Why this matters for builders
Even if you never use DriftLess, you can apply this today: check whether your current AI tool shows you per-session cost in dollars or in credits. If it is credits, calculate the effective markup against the provider's published API rates. For many platforms, the gap is 3x to 8x. That is not a service fee — that is a pricing model designed to make cost invisible.
How DriftLess handles cost
DriftLess is built on BYOK from day one. Zero markup on AI costs, ever. You see the real cost per session, per provider, in real time. When cost is transparent, you naturally build leaner — choosing the right model for each task instead of paying a flat credit rate for everything.
Stop paying a markup on AI you already have access to.
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