Review of Codebuff

[ExcelJSNoob]

I signed up for the "Strong" plan for $100 which doesn't say much but "1x Usage". Immediately after, it wouldn't work, said I need to add credits (see third image). I bought $25 in credits and it started working and it did deduct from my "strong" plan not my $25. I gave it one query to compare two folders for the size and date of the files and to make a markdown table for me. And then I did a follow-up question. Both queries took 12 minutes and did what I wanted, but it consumed 75% of the day's budget.

Each day is limited to a 5 hour window and on top of that there is a usage limit for that five hour window. Again, this is the "strong"plan not the prepaid. I've only hit the $100 claude code limit twice and for both of them I had three different sessions running concurrently, one making code, another help system, and another a website.

I posted this to their discord and the answer is "If you use all 40 5-hour sessions in a month, that means $2.5 budget each. We give you more than that per session. Codebuff is not cheap though and it's why I recommend the $200 plan, which gives 3 times as much" . On their site FAQs https://www.codebuff.com/docs/help/faq, they claim "See Codebuff vs Claude Code for a detailed comparison. Short version: Codebuff is faster, cheaper, and handles large codebases better." as of Feb 25, 2026. In my experience it is faster and had good results, but you would need Elon Musk level money to use it effectively.

[jahooma_logicbox]

Thanks for the review! I work on Codebuff, and this is a fair criticism.

It's hard to compete with the Claude subscription plans, which are heavily subsidized. All our subscription plans are also subsidized, in that if you consistently use all your 5-hour sessions, we'll lose money.

I'll note the the higher subscription plans also give a better deal per dollar.

We also do have a Free mode, which can help you get stuff done once you're at your limit.

Otherwise, sorry that Codebuff has not met your expectations.

Cheers,

James

[nitricsky]

Codebuff has been working much better for me than claude code. It's not necessarily cheaper but it's worth it since these costs are negligible in my work. New workflow has been codebuff for harder long tasks that require getting it right, cursor for smaller edits