Tutorial: Calculating Claude Code Subagent Token Costs

On October 25, 2026 at 09:00, DEV Community published an article titled "How many tokens does a Claude Code subagent actually burn, and how to calculate it yourself". The article observes that search results about Claude Code subagent token usage contradict each other. One writer cut their usage billing by 40% by sending grunt work to subagents. Another watched Claude Code spin up five subagents in parallel and hit the Pro limit in about 15 minutes. A third counted 66K to 84K tokens per subagent (July 18, 2026) before any code was written. The article argues all three can be right at once, because a subagent trades two costs against each other: a fixed startup bill it pays every time it is launched, and the context it keeps out of the main session. Which one wins depends on the task.

The article demonstrates what a new subagent loads before it starts doing anything, how to read the real token count of each subagent out of the conversation log files Claude Code writes itself, and gives rules for deciding whether a task is worth opening a subagent for. As of now, only this single report is available, and there is no further development on the topic.