Stop Over-Thinking AI Subscriptions – Peter Steinberger

Summary

I’ve been working heavily with AI for the past few months, and many times when I post something on Twitter, the replies are predictable: “Oh my god, how much did you pay for that?” The thing is, people don’t understand that you don’t actually have to pay that much to get incredible AI productivity. After using the best AI subscription deals 2025 has to offer, here’s the real math (all prices in USD). PlanMonthly FeeIncluded UsageMarginal CostClaude Pro$20~45 messages/5hRate limitedClaude Max 5×$100~225 messages/5hRate limitedClaude Max 20×$200~900 messages/5hRate limitedCursor Pro$20500 fast requests$0.04/fast requestOpenAI o3Pay-per-useN/A$10-40/1M tokens The Current Best Deal: Claude Max at $200/month Claude Max gives you almost unlimited use of Claude Code, which is hands-down the best terminal-based AI tool available (next to Cursor). For $200/month, you get 20× the usage of Claude Pro. Claude Max works on a rolling 5-hour block system with roughly 900 messages per 5-hour window. The moment you send your first prompt, the timer starts. When 5 hours are up, everything refreshes with a new block and full quota. The Claude Max subscription uses Opus as the default model and switches to Sonnet when you reach 50% of the 5-hour limit (this is configurable). If you really burn through your whole allowance for that window, you can switch to API-based billing. If you’re tight on money and you really need this extremely high use case, look at the development partner program where they offer 30% off standard API pricing (this discount applies only to API usage, not the Max sub). Cursor: The Math That Makes Sense Cursor Pro costs $20/month and gives you 500 “fast” requests plus unlimited “slow” ones. Beyond that, it’s $0.04 per fast request (per Cursor docs). Cursor offers two pricing modes: Normal mode charges a fixed number of requests per message regardless of context size, while Max mode uses token-based pricing (API cost + 20% margin) for complex reasoning tasks. Most ...