5 Ways to Reduce Token Usage (That Actually Work)

Your AI coding tool is burning tokens on things you don't need. Here's how to cut 30–50% of your token spend — each method includes a real tool you can use today.

Why Token Usage Is Eating Your Budget

Every prompt, every file read, every thinking step costs tokens. Most developers bleed money on three invisible leaks: routing expensive models to trivial tasks, letting context balloon past 80%, and re-reading the same files repeatedly.

The 5 Methods

01 — Route Cheap Models to Simple Tasks
90% of your daily AI work doesn't need Opus. File lookups, variable renames — that's Haiku. Set your default to Sonnet, subagents to Haiku. Savings: 20–50%.

02 — Compact Before Context Explodes
Default compaction threshold is 95% — way too late. Drop it to 50%. Savings: 10–20%.

03 — ECC (Recommended)
Everything Claude Code automates all optimizations: model routing, thinking token caps (10K vs 32K default), compaction triggers. 182K+ GitHub stars, Anthropic Hackathon winner. One install covers Methods 01 and 02 out of the box. Savings: 30–50%.

04 — Trim Your CLAUDE.md
Every line loads into every conversation. Cut from 500 to 10. Savings: 10–30%.

05 — Search First, Read Later
Use grep/glob to locate, Read only what you need. Savings: 20–40%.

The Numbers

Method	Effort	Token Savings	Works With
01 Model Routing	5 min config	20–50%	CC, Cursor, Codex
02 Strategic Compaction	2 min config	10–20%	Claude Code
03 ECC (Recommended)	1 min install	30–50%	CC, Cursor, Codex, Gemini, Copilot
04 Trim Rules	30 min audit	10–30%	Any AI coding tool
05 Search First	Behavior change	20–40%	CC, Cursor, Codex

Pro tip: Start with ECC — it automates the first two methods out of the box.

Full guide with code snippets and FAQ: https://tokencut.org/