model-cost-compare

model-cost-compare is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from nyldn/claude-octopus. It costs 28 tokens per session (659 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A calculator for comparing AI model costs for a described task. It estimates the amount of text sent and returned, prices suitable providers, and identifies the least expensive option that appears adequate.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when choosing a model for refactoring, code review, architecture work, long-context analysis, or web research. It helps compare paid and included-cost providers using stated assumptions.
Why use it?
It replaces choosing a model by guesswork with an explicit cost comparison. It makes the trade-off between task difficulty, context size, quality needs, and price easier to see.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for Claude Code and Codex: disable-model-invocation in frontmatter, but also agents/openai.yaml present. Also seen: mentions CLAUDE.md; positional $N argument; mentions Codex.

Part of the octo plugin — 70 skills, 106 commands, 10 agents, 18 hooks shipped together

Good fit Use it when choosing a model for refactoring, code review, architecture work, long-context analysis, or web research. It helps compare paid and included-cost providers using stated assumptions.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/model-cost-compare
About the project

Claude Octopus is an orchestration project that sends research, design, and coding tasks to Claude Code and other AI model providers so their results can be compared. Developers use it for multi-model work, disagreement detection, reviews, persistent context, and an optional workflow that moves from discovery through delivery. The catalogue entries are its commands, skills, agents, instructions, hooks, plugins, and settings.

nyldn/claude-octopus · 4,056 stars · on GitHub · reddit.com

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add nyldn/claude-octopus --skill model-cost-compare
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nyldn/claude-octopus

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install octo, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 70 skills, 106 commands, 10 agents, 18 hooks.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for model-cost-compare

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/model-cost-compare/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/model-cost-compare)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/model-cost-compare"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/model-cost-compare/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for model-cost-compare

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/model-cost-compare"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/model-cost-compare.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 28 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 659 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00028 $0.00659
Opus 5 $0.00014 $0.00329
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00132
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00066

Measured 3d ago against content hash 087c67bc87db, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

model-cost-compare scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 3d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/octopus-starter-pack/model-cost-compare/SKILL.md · 29 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 29 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Model Cost Comparison (Starter Pack)

Answer "which model should I use for this, and what will it cost?" with numbers instead of vibes.

When to use

The user describes a task (bulk refactor, deep review, quick lookup, long-context analysis) and wants the cheapest seat that is still adequate.

Steps

  1. Classify the task. Bucket it: mechanical (rename, format), standard coding, hard reasoning (architecture, security review), long-context (>200K tokens input), or web research.
  2. Estimate volume. Rough input/output token estimate from the described scope (files touched × average size; state the assumption).
  3. Price the roster. Using the cost table in CLAUDE.md ($/MTok input/output), compute the estimated cost for each plausible seat: Claude Opus 5 ($5/$25), Claude Sonnet 5 ($2/$10), Fable 5.1 ($10/$50, 1M context, explicit-only), Codex GPT-5.6 Sol ($4/$20), Terra ($2/$12), Luna ($0.20/$1.20), GPT-6 Astra ($10/$50, explicit-only), Perplexity Sonar Pro ($3/$15), and the included-cost seats (agy, copilot, ollama, cursor-agent) at $0. For Astra requests above 272K input tokens, apply 2x input and 1.5x output pricing to the full request.
  4. Recommend one seat. Pick the cheapest adequate option and defend it in two sentences. Mechanical work goes to included or budget seats; hard reasoning justifies Opus 5 at high effort; only a bounded judgment-class call (ambiguous architecture, API design, product tradeoffs) justifies Fable 5.1 at twice the Opus price.
  5. Check risk surfaces. Regardless of the classification, escalate specifically to Opus 5 when the task touches API or schema contracts, security-sensitive code or CI configuration, release artifacts, user-facing UI, a new module, or a breaking change. Fable 5.1 remains limited to bounded judgment-class calls and is never the security-audit seat. Astra is also explicit-only and does not provide independence from GPT-5.6. Cheap-seat agreement never settles a judgment-class decision.
  6. Show the spread. A three-row table: recommended seat, one cheaper-but-riskier option, one premium option, each with estimated dollars for this task.

Read the full file on GitHub · 29 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 3d ago Changed 087c67bc87db
  2. 4d ago First seen · 29 lines · 28 tokens per session scan A e40013875dc5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

model-cost-compare is a skill published in the GitHub repository nyldn/claude-octopus (4,056 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 28 tokens to every session and 659 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-05.

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