I run a coding agent named Warp.

When I started using it, there was a monthly fixed price model with tiers. You get so many tokens allotted a month. After the allotment is exhausted, you'd need to wait until the month turns around.

Recently they switched to a system where you can buy extra tokens. That costs me a whole lot more, but I imagine that from their perspective they’re trying to keep their losses down.

Let’s say I use Warp 6 hours a day, full-on. What would that usage cost in money and in energy?

Warp uses a credit system, where each interaction uses at least 1 credit, complex tasks use more. And advanced models like Claude Opus 4.1 or GPT-5 use more.

If I use Warp 6 hours a day and assume an average of 1 credit a minute that’s 360 credits an hour or 2,160 credits a day. A credit is several thousand tokens, depending on the model.

If we estimate a credit at around 0.001 usd, my extra usage would cost about 70 a month on top of the 20 dollar base plan, so about 90 usd. Higher if I use big models on complex tasks.

But that’s what it costs me. What does it really cost, in energy?

AI models like those used by Warp (Claude, GPT, Gemini) consume a lot of energy per token.

Warp’s base plan covers 1,500 credits, so I’d need 63,300 extra credits a month. Given the industry average of 0.1 kWh per 1,000 tokens, that’s 6,480 kWh a month or about 216 kWh daily.

Let’s say that the energy cost of my Warp use is 7,000 kWh a month. That would that cost a homeowner in the EU around 2,000 euros.

Wow.

Looking at costs this way tells me that Warp is operating at a huge loss. I live in Amsterdam so my monthly energy bill would be around 2k, yet I pay Warp no more than 90 euros.

Which brings me to the following: isn’t it cheaper to just hire a programmer from a low-wage country?

Not cheaper for me, mind you, I see the nominal difference. Cheaper for the environment maybe?

Is it?

Hiring a full time skilled programmer in, say, India or Latin America, would cost an average of 2,000 euros a month. Remote, of course. But similar in that I would have a developer on a screen.

So yes, for the environment, it would be cheaper. The average cost of home energy is around 50 euros in those countries, multiple people live in a home.

As is pointed out before, AI is an energy guzzler. The way it’s done now is tremendously inefficient, generating a single query response could cost as much energy as lighting a room for an hour.

But it’s early days yet. Early high pressure steam engines were also very inefficient, and prone to blowing up and wounding, maiming and killing who knows how many operators. James Watt’s designs were much safer, using low pressure to achieve better results.

So here’s to hoping that sometime soon we’ll invent a better way. Until then, it’s good to know that using a coding agent is costing someone, but probably not you, as much as hiring a human.