AI-assisted coding isn’t cheap anymore. Developers across vibe code tool like Bolt, Lovable, Cursor, and Replit are watching their credits disappear on simple edits and half-baked outputs. The result? A hidden cost crisis that’s turning “free-flow coding” into an expensive habit. Here’s what’s really happening, why it matters, and how teams are cutting the burn without killing the vibe.
The token hangover no one saw coming
It started as magic. Type what you want, watch your AI build it. Then came the bill.
Across every major vibe coding platform, developers are waking up to the same problem: token burn. Simple requests are ballooning into million-token runs, credit systems are glitching, and budgets are evaporating before a single feature ships.
One user put it bluntly:
“Is anyone else noticing that Bolt is absolutely blowing through tokens on simple requests? I feel like it’s adding the entire project to the context when I just want to edit something minor on one page—and it’s consuming like 600K–1.2M tokens!”
That’s not an isolated complaint. Another frustrated Lovable user shared:
“I opened the app, worked a little on my game, sent three chats—‘erm please upgrade your monthly chat limit has expired.’ LIKE HELLO??”
The energy that once fueled this new era of AI-powered development is running headfirst into an old problem: economics. And right now, it’s not adding up.
$5,000 a month on context
One engineer summed it up in a single comment:
“Token spend is exploding… some engineers are already spending $5K/month on tokens.”
That’s not a platform problem — it’s a design problem. Vibe coding platforms are loading everything into context for every edit. Instead of focusing the AI’s attention on the code you’re changing, they’re feeding it the entire project. It’s like paying a consultant to reread your entire codebase every time you ask for a one-line fix.
The result? Developers are paying thousands in invisible compute just to stand still.
The “glitch tax” nobody budgets for
Then there’s the credit system frustration — or what one user dubbed the glitch tax.
“I’m on the $100/month plan for 500 message credits. Simple math: that’s $0.20 per credit. But if the system glitches out and burns a credit without doing what it says… suddenly I’m paying 11% more than I signed up for.”
This is the quiet cost no one talks about — the cumulative drain of failed generations, half-finished tasks, and misfires that still get billed. In an ecosystem built on speed and iteration, every one of those small burns adds up fast.
Why it’s happening
If we strip away the hype, the reasons are simple:
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Full-context overkill: Most AIs don’t yet know how to isolate the part of your app you want to change. They load everything — front, back, and sideways.
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Iterative debugging loops: Fix, retry, regenerate. Every loop is another bill.
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Learning curve inefficiency: Developers are still learning how to prompt effectively — and every bad prompt costs money.
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Platform design debt: AI builders optimize for speed and delight, not token efficiency.
It’s not malicious — it’s just immature economics. But it’s pushing vibe coding into a sustainability problem.
When creativity becomes cost creep
Three months ago, a Lovable user shared this:
“After burning through all my credits, I switched gears… Lovable is great for kickstarting ideas fast, but when the credits run out, you’re forced to go back to the traditional engineering mindset.”
That shift — from fluid AI building back to manual coding — is happening more often. The creative freedom of vibe coding collides with the reality of running out of tokens mid-project.
The vibe coding boom is built on accessibility: lowering the barrier to creation, letting anyone spin up an app from a prompt. But that dream starts to wobble when you realize your “free” AI assistant is quietly burning through a senior developer’s salary every month.
How smart teams are fixing it
The best teams aren’t walking away from AI. They’re optimizing for what AI does well and offloading what it doesn’t.
When it comes to collaboration features — chat, feeds, file sharing — building them via vibe coding platforms is token suicide. A single “add chat” request can consume hundreds of thousands of tokens over multiple attempts, only to break on deploy.
That’s where pre-built components change the math.
With tools like Weavy, developers drop in production-ready collaboration features — complete with backend, APIs, and security — without burning a single token. No iteration cycles. No debugging. Just drop it in and move on.
A quick cost comparison
| Feature |
Vibe-coded build |
With Weavy |
| Chat |
500K–1M tokens, multiple retries, post-launch security fixes |
Pre-built, one integration, enterprise-ready |
| Feeds |
Weeks of token-driven iterations to get working UX |
Works out of the box |
| Files |
High token waste for upload logic, sync, storage |
Pre-tested and secure |
| AI integration |
Burn-through trial-and-error on context |
Built-in, configurable via API |
If a dev team is spending $5K a month on token runs, and Weavy eliminates even 40% of those costs, that’s thousands back in the budget — and a faster release cycle.
When to vibe code vs. when to buy
Vibe code your unique business logic — the magic that makes your product different.
Use Weavy for everything else — the standard, expected features that shouldn’t be draining your AI budget.
As one Reddit user put it:
“The calculus of build vs. buy is needing to be reconsidered.”
Exactly. Especially when every build attempt now comes with a hidden compute tax.
The bottom line
Vibe coding is still the future. But right now, it’s an expensive future if you don’t manage your token spend.
Every developer feels that burn: watching credits vanish on incomplete outputs, paying for retries that never improve, and losing hours of flow to debugging.
The fix isn’t to code less with AI — it’s to be smarter about where you let AI roam.
If your AI builds are burning more budget than value, it’s time to stop wasting tokens and start shipping smarter.
Get started with Weavy
