Two devs burn $2,025 in API costs building a game with Claude, screenshots show progress
zeeg · x · 2026-10-14
Developer zeeg shared that their project crossed $2k in API spend, posting a billing screenshot: $2,025.46 at list prices across 2 people, with Claude (opus-5-5 and haiku-5-5) accounting for $1,997.66 — 11.6M output tokens, 74.6M input tokens, and 17K messages — plus $27.80 on Tripo studio. zeeg personally spent $1,784.84; collaborator grichadev $240.61.
Screenshots in the thread show what the money bought: 3D character run-animation cycles, T-pose character models with backpacks, a third-person primal forest scene running at 70fps, fall-colored foliage, and a village building system — a full game prototype driven by Claude-written code and Tripo-generated 3D assets. The thread is a rare transparent look at the real cost structure of building a game with AI coding plus AI-generated assets.
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