Why your AI coding bill jumped 25x in 2026
In 2026 the major AI coding tools moved to token-based billing. If your bill suddenly jumped, here is why, and what to do about it.
The shift
Copilot, Cursor, and others now charge per token your assistant reads and generates. Reports put heavy users from tens of euros a month to many hundreds; a single agentic, repository-wide task can burn 50,000 to 200,000 tokens. One large team reportedly burned its annual AI budget in a quarter.
Why it happens
The model does everything token by token. It reads your context and generates every line, and you pay for all of it, every time, even for the parts that are not really creative.
The fix is a compiler
Most AI coding work is not invention. It is translation: turning intent into correct code using the right APIs and the standard library. A compiler can do that part deterministically, with no model call. Your assistant keeps the small intent-and-composition part; the heavy composition moves off the meter.
That is Pauhu Fusion: a compiler your assistant calls. Flat 279 EUR per seat, falling the more you scale. The receipt shows the tokens and energy each call avoided.
It does not make every AI cost vanish; your own model still does intent. It takes the heavy, repeatable part off the variable bill, so the line stops swinging.