AI cost (alpha)
Track what your organization spends on GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and Claude Code, and see how AI spend maps to teams, people, and work
Available at AI tools → AI cost
AI cost is in alpha and not enabled by default. If you'd like to try it, reach out to your Swarmia point of contact or hello@swarmia.com.
AI cost shows what your organization spends on AI coding tools and breaks the spend down by team and person. Combined with the AI cost column in the focus summary, it connects AI spend to the work your teams deliver.
What's available today
Swarmia distinguishes three types of AI tool cost:
Fixed subscription cost: The estimated cost of seat licenses, based on each tool's monthly list price.
Usage-based cost: The actual usage-based spend billed by the tool provider.
Compute value: The list price of the tokens used, regardless of what you actually pay. This is useful for understanding the value of compute consumed, for example, on subscription plans where heavy usage doesn't increase your bill.
During the alpha, availability varies by tool:
The AI cost page
The page shows costs for the selected team and timeframe:
Compute value: The list price of (Claude Code and Cursor) token usage over time.
Fixed subscription cost: Estimated seat license costs over time, broken down by tool.
Teams and Users tabs: A breakdown by team or by person, with total cost, fixed cost per tool, and the number of merged pull requests. On the Teams tab, hover over a team's users to see each person's cost. Both tables can be downloaded as a CSV.
The breakdowns are based on your current team members. Historical team memberships aren't supported: if people switch teams, their past costs move with them to their current team. Seats that don't belong to anyone on your current teams aren't shown, so you can't yet use the view to spot spend on unassigned seats.
How costs are calculated
Fixed subscription costs are estimates based on list prices, not your invoices. Swarmia assumes each tool's monthly list price — annual plan pricing, negotiated discounts, and regional price differences aren't taken into account. The monthly price is spread evenly across the days of the month, and each seat accrues cost for each day it's active:
GitHub Copilot: $19 per month for Business seats and $39 per month for Enterprise seats, based on seat data from your GitHub integration.
Cursor: $40 per month per member, based on member data from your Cursor integration. Cursor premium plan seats ($120 per month) aren't detected yet — they show up as standard $40 seats.
Claude Code: Anthropic's list price for each seat tier (standard or premium) in your imported seat data.
Compute value is the list price of token usage and the harness (overhead the agent adds, like system prompts and tool calls), regardless of what you actually pay.
Cursor: Includes the list price of token usage and the Cursor fee.
Claude Code: Comes from the OpenTelemetry metrics and includes harness costs, such as prompt caching and tool use. Cost from Claude Code Analytics API are not yet supported.
All costs are shown in US dollars.
Setup
AI cost uses data from the AI coding tool integrations:
GitHub Copilot fixed costs are based on seat data from the GitHub Copilot integration.
Cursor fixed costs and compute value are based on member and usage data from the Cursor integration.
Claude Code
Compute value requires the OpenTelemetry setup described in the Claude Code integration.
Fixed costs require importing your seats as a CSV file (see below).
Importing Claude seats
To track Claude Code subscription costs, upload your organization's seat list to Swarmia:
In Claude organization settings, select Export CSV. You need the Owner role in your Claude organization to do this.
In Swarmia, go to AI tools → AI cost and select Import Claude seats. You need admin permissions in Swarmia.
Upload the CSV file.
Each import is a snapshot of your seat roster at that point in time. Swarmia counts each seat's cost for up to one month before and after the snapshot date (or halfway to the previous or next import, whichever comes first). Upload a new CSV at least monthly to avoid gaps in your historical cost data — and whenever your seat count or tiers change.
AI cost in the focus summary
When AI cost is enabled for your organization, the focus summary shows an AI cost column next to each issue or initiative. It shows the compute (token) value attributed to that work and its share of the total AI cost in the view.
To attribute cost to work, Swarmia spreads each person's daily AI cost across the issues and pull requests they contributed to that day, in proportion to their effort. If someone accrues AI cost on a day without attributable work, that cost is left out of the focus summary breakdown.
Frequently asked questions
Why don't I see costs for today?
Like other AI tool data in Swarmia, cost data is synced periodically, so the numbers can be up to a day behind.
Why is someone's cost attributed to the wrong person or missing?
Check that their AI tool identities are connected to the right contributor in the Contributor settings. Swarmia attributes cost to the merged contributor, so unmerged identities can leave cost unattributed.
Why doesn't the compute value match our AI tool invoice?
Compute value is the list price of the tokens and harness (overhead the agent adds, like system prompts and tool calls) used, not your billed cost. On subscription plans like Claude Team, token usage doesn't map directly to what you pay.
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