Kilo Code pricing: plans, API costs, and the cheapest route

Kilo Code pricing separates the platform, model usage, and cloud compute. The individual platform tier is free; Teams lists $15 per user per month. Model access can come from Kilo credits, Kilo Pass, free models, or your own provider. The cheapest option is the one that pays for your actual workload with the least unused credit and unnecessary fees.

Kilo Code pricing at a glance

Sources checked September 17, 2026: Kilo pricing, gateway billing, and Kilo Pass. Cloud execution is another metered service; a platform seat does not absorb every compute or inference charge.

Include the credit-purchase fee in your comparison

Kilo documents a separate 5% processing fee on purchased credits. Under that rule, $100 of credits costs $105 before tax and funds $100 of model usage. The model rate itself is still the upstream rate. Keeping those two facts separate lets you compare a checkout total with another provider fairly.

A gateway BYOK request is accounted at zero cost on Kilo's side because your provider charges you. This is a transfer of billing responsibility, not zero-cost inference. If you connect a provider directly through a custom-provider setting, inspect that route's account history as well; do not assume every charge will appear in one dashboard.

Set a limit where the money is spent. Check automatic top-ups, organization limits, and the provider balance before running long unattended tasks. A usage alert tells you about spending; a hard cap stops it. Choose the behavior you want rather than relying on the label alone.

When Kilo Pass offers a better effective price

Kilo Pass combines purchased credit with conditional bonus credit. The current offer includes a 50% first-month bonus for monthly plans, later streak rewards up to 40%, and 50% bonuses under annual billing. Bonus credit is earned after consuming the paid portion and expires monthly. The full value therefore depends on reaching the qualifying usage and consuming the bonus before it expires.

A 50% credit bonus is not a 50% price cut. If $100 buys $150 of usage and you use all of it, the effective cost is $100 ÷ $150, or about 66.7 cents per dollar of usage: a 33.3% reduction before fees. If you use only $80, the unused allowance does not lower that month's cash outlay. This arithmetic is the useful comparison, whatever promotional percentage appears on the plan.

For a steady heavy workload, a pass can beat plain credits. For sporadic work, usage billing can be cheaper even when its unit rate is higher. Look at two or three representative weeks before choosing annual billing for a discount you may not consume.

Compare the same model before switching providers

First hold the model constant. Compare input, output, cache-write, and cache-read rates, then add any payment fee. At Kunavo, current Claude Sonnet 4.6 rates are $1.20 input and $6.00 output per million tokens. The live API price table shows the catalog you can choose from; these are catalog prices, not a claim of the lowest price across the entire market.

A Kunavo catalog estimate is a billing floor, not a guaranteed maximum. When the upstream service reports its charge, the amount billed is the greater of catalog cost and that charge multiplied by the applicable markup; otherwise chat usage bills at catalog cost. Use the final usage record and billing rules when comparing providers. Kunavo requires a $10 minimum prepaid top-up; it adds usage credit rather than charging $10 per task or selling a subscription.

Then compare completed work. Run the same bounded coding task through the candidates, include failed attempts, and record the total charge. A provider with a lower posted rate can lose if it interrupts the agent's tool calls or sends you through more retries. Conversely, an expensive default model may be unnecessary for routine edits that a cheaper model completes correctly.

Use this simple worksheet: platform subscription + cash spent on inference + cloud compute + external tools. Keep retained subscriptions in the total. If you switch only some tasks, count the residual bill on the old route too; partial migration often costs less than replacing everything at once.

Try a different billing route inside Kilo

Kilo documents an OpenAI Compatible provider for a custom base URL, API key, and model. The Kunavo Kilo Code setup covers those fields. Choose a live model, complete one small edit, and verify the usage entry before using it for a long task.

If your choice includes changing the client, read Kilo Code vs Cline or Kilo Code vs Claude Code. If the client already suits you, use the Kilo API provider comparison to choose the provider and payment route.

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