Claude Code pricing isn't a mystery — it's a formula. Once you see it, the 10x sessions stop being surprising and become predictable. A practical guide with real numbers from 66 measured sessions.
Here's a question most Claude Code users can't answer: what will the next turn in your current session cost?
Not the total session — just the next single turn. The answer is closer to calculable than you think, and once you understand the formula, the sessions that run 10× more expensive than you expected stop being mysterious.
The formula (it fits on one line)
turn_cost ≈ (context_tokens × 0.000003 × 0.1) + (output_tokens × 0.000015)
└─ cache-read (re-sent context) ─┘ └─ output ─┘
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