---
title: "Ballet vs Claude code production cost benchmarks"
description: "Thirty days of production usage across five live customer workflows, compared with building the same workflow on Claude."
canonical_url: "https://docs.ballet.dev/articles/ballet-vs-claude-code-production-cost-benchmarks-PoDd09T6dX"
md_url: "https://docs.ballet.dev/articles/ballet-vs-claude-code-production-cost-benchmarks-PoDd09T6dX.md"
---
# Ballet vs Claude code production cost benchmarks

Thirty days of production usage across five live customer workflows, compared with building the same workflow on Claude.

## The short version

**76% cheaper** to own over a year than building the same workflow on Claude.

**53×** return on the repetitive support it replaces on one workflow, at one customer.

On the highest-volume customer workflow, a Ballet run bills at **$0.088**. That is about 5.5× the raw token cost of running those same tokens directly.

Year-one ownership of that workflow is **$3,303 on Ballet** against **$13,873** building it in-house on Claude.

## Twelve-month total cost of ownership

One workflow the Freshdesk auto-responder, **2,238 runs a month**.


 ![Year-one cost](https://docs.ballet.dev/api/attachments.redirect?id=e7167d26-5145-41c2-af6b-1974e0ee69c7 " =960x360")



| Approach | Build | Run (12 mo) | Maintain | Year one |
|----|----|----|----|----|
| Build it yourself on Claude | $8,400 | $433 | $5,040 | $13,873 |
| **Ballet** | **$940** | **$2,363** | **$0** | **$3,303** |

**76% cheaper**, and live in days rather than weeks. A self-built loop needs someone to build it, host it, monitor it, handle retries, and fix it when Freshdesk changes an API. Cost-per-run figures price all of that at zero.

Build is two weeks of engineering at a loaded $105/hour (80 hours = $8,400). Maintain is four hours a month at the same rate ($5,040 a year). Ballet's build figure is the $137 of console usage we actually measured plus a day of someone's time.

## What it replaces

**2,238 tickets a month** at 8 minutes of agent time and $35/hour is **$10,444 of support work**, against a Ballet bill of **$197**. A **53× return**, on one workflow, at one customer.

# Cost per run across production

All measured, 30 days. Per-run cost depends on the job **$0.09 to $3.04** in this set.

| Workflow | Runs | Cost / run | 30-day bill |
|----|----|----|----|
| **Freshdesk AI Auto-Responder v2** | **2,238** | **$0.0880** | **$197** |
| Zendesk Refund Assistant | 295 | $0.2302 | $68 |
| Withdrawal API Response Generator | 129 | $0.2013 | $26 |
| Implementation Handoff (Custom SF) | 46 | $3.0371 | $140 |
| Invoice queue worker | 18 | $2.5888 | $47 |


## Where the money goes

Nearly half of billed usage in the window is people **building** workflows, not running them.


 ![Where billed usage goes](https://docs.ballet.dev/api/attachments.redirect?id=758f9bcc-1a6f-4f2e-a5a7-a244ee63acb9 " =1600x680")



| Event type | Share of billed usage |
|----|----|
| Workflow steps - running production jobs | 52% |
| **Console - building workflows** | **45%** |
| Context compaction | 4% |

Build cost is one-off; run cost approaches zero.

## What the percentages mean

| Figure | What it compares | What it does not |
|----|----|----|
| **76% cheaper** | Year-one ownership of the workflow: $3,303 on Ballet vs $13,873 to build and run it on Claude. | Token consumption. Not a per-run token price. |
| **53×** | Support labour replaced ($10,444) divided by the Ballet bill ($197), same workflow. | A company-wide ROI. Two workflows in the original set have an ROI profile. |
| **5.5× raw tokens** | Ballet's billed run vs the raw Anthropic cost of the tokens that run consumed. | Cheaper than DIY tokens. It is not. |
| **96% / 10% tokens** | A token-consumption claim that has been circulating internally. | Bills. burns about 1.3× the tokens a customer would use themselves, so it loses a raw-token comparison and wins on ownership. |

A workflow only comes out cheaper on token cost if the do-it-yourself equivalent would burn far more tokens than we do — typically deep tool loops over large documents. Simple ticket loops do not. They come out cheaper on ownership and labour.

## How the numbers were built

* **Ballet figures** measured from the production usage ledger, 30 days to 10 September 2026.
* **Claude figures** modelled from published Anthropic list prices against observed token counts, assuming 3× input tokens for agentic context resend.
* **Build** is two weeks at a loaded $105/hour ($8,400). **Maintain** is four hours a month at the same rate ($5,040 a year). Ballet build = measured console usage + one day of someone's time.
* **Labour rates** from our own ROI assessor (8 minutes / ticket, $35/hour, medium confidence).