May 5, 2026 · 4 min read

# How to Save Claude Code Tokens

Claude Code is powerful but expensive. Input tokens are 85-95% of your bill. Here's how to cut them by 94%.

## Why Claude Code costs so much

Every time Claude Code needs context about your codebase, it reads entire files. Ask about one function? It reads the whole 800-line file. Ask about a payment flow? It reads every file that might be relevant.

A typical session on a medium project costs $0.14 on Sonnet or $0.70 on Opus. Most of that is input tokens, and most input tokens are wasted on code Claude didn't need.

## The fix: index your codebase

Code Context Engine (CCE) indexes your codebase locally using tree-sitter AST parsing and vector embeddings. When Claude needs context, it searches the index and gets only the relevant functions, not entire files.

    uv tool install code-context-engine
    cd /path/to/your/project
    cce init

That's it. Three commands. Claude now searches instead of reading. Everything stays local on your machine.

## How much does it save?

Metric | Without CCE | With CCE
--- | --- | ---
Tokens per query | 83,681 | 4,927
Cost per session (Sonnet) | $0.14 | $0.04
Cost per session (Opus) | $0.70 | $0.21

Benchmarked on FastAPI (53 files, 180K tokens, 20 real queries). 94% fewer input tokens. Reproducible in 2 commands.

## Works with more than Claude Code

CCE works with any MCP-compatible editor:

Editor | Setup
--- | ---
Claude Code | Auto-detected by `cce init`
Cursor | Auto-detected
VS Code / Copilot | Auto-detected
Gemini CLI | Auto-detected
Codex CLI | Auto-detected
OpenCode | Auto-detected

One index. All editors. Same savings.

## What about quality?

Recall@10 = 0.90 on FastAPI. Nine out of ten times, CCE finds the right code. When it doesn't, Claude falls back to reading the full file normally. You lose nothing on the 10% miss rate, you save 94% on the 90% hit rate.

## Track your actual savings

Run `cce savings` to see exactly how many tokens and dollars CCE saved you. Not estimates. Actual numbers, per query, with dollar amounts from live Anthropic pricing.

### Start saving tokens now

Free, open source, MIT licensed. Your code never leaves your machine.

`uv tool install code-context-engine && cce init`
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