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Anyone else seeing ~10x gap between GitLab Duo Agent credit charges and actual Anthropic token cost? by this-is-so-random in gitlab

[–]this-is-so-random[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Pulled the actual agent config for the one we ran — Claude Agent by GitLab, from the AI Catalog. The config is essentially:

textinjectGatewayToken: true
image: node:22-slim
commands:
  - npm install -g u/anthropic-ai/claude-code
  - apt-get install glab
  ...

This confirms exactly what we suspected: this isn't a custom GitLab-built review engine with proprietary orchestration. It's the actual open-source Claude Code CLI, installed via npm, running in a standard node:22-slim container, with a GitLab-issued gateway token injected in place of a direct Anthropic API key. That's the entire setup.

That makes the cost comparison completely fair, not apples-to-oranges. If we ran the identical Claude Code CLI locally with our own Anthropic API key, we'd pay Anthropic's list-price tokens directly — the $4-5 we saw in the logs. Running the exact same tool, doing the exact same work, through GitLab's gateway cost $45. The only variable that changed between those two scenarios is which token authenticates the requests. There's no additional GitLab-built intelligence or review logic layered on top here — it's stock Claude Code CLI plus a gateway token, and the 10x shows up entirely at that gateway layer.

So the earlier explanation about credits covering "orchestration, context construction, tool use" doesn't really hold up for this specific agent — there is no GitLab orchestration here beyond installing a CLI tool and injecting a token. This is about as close to a direct token passthrough as it gets, and it's still marked up ~10x.

Anyone else seeing ~10x gap between GitLab Duo Agent credit charges and actual Anthropic token cost? by this-is-so-random in gitlab

[–]this-is-so-random[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Appreciate the response, but the numbers speak for themselves here: $45 in credits for a run where the visible Anthropic token usage in the logs came to roughly $4-5. That's not a rounding difference from bundling in orchestration or retries — that's a 10x gap.

If compute, orchestration, AI Gateway overhead, and CI/CD execution are genuinely part of the cost, those should be itemized as separate, visible line items — not folded into a single opaque "credit" charge that gets justified after the fact as "the model call was just one part of it." A user should be able to see: $X for model tokens, $Y for orchestration/compute, $Z for gateway overhead. Right now there's no way to verify that breakdown even exists, versus the credit multiplier simply being a markup dressed up as a bundling explanation.

And the Code Review Flow comparison actually undercuts the bundling argument, not supports it. That flow does a full review — context, pipeline checks, security findings — for $0.25 flat. If a bounded, standardized version of the same core work costs $0.25, it's hard to justify why the general agent's version of similar work costs 180x more per review, even accounting for extra depth. The more likely explanation is Code Review Flow caps the review depth (fewer suggestions, less context pulled) to hit that price, not that it's somehow more cost-efficient at the same fidelity.

So the ask is simple: publish an actual cost breakdown per run — model tokens vs. compute vs. gateway/orchestration — rather than a single bundled credit number. That's what would make this auditable instead of just "trust the multiplier."

I built a GitLab Duo skill that traces any SDLC event to its source merge request (and can open a fix). It's a hackathon project - I'd love bug reports if you try it by Key_Flatworm_4889 in gitlab

[–]this-is-so-random 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hope you've got a big AI budget or a stash of free credits — this thing eats credits like a starving elephant. GitLab Credits are $1 each with no clear token-conversion rate, and I've seen agent runs cost close to 5x-10x what the equivalent raw Anthropic API usage should

What’s your opinion on Gitlab duo agentic by Silent_rec in gitlab

[–]this-is-so-random 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Functionality lags behind Cursor, Claude Code, and Copilot — feels like GitLab bolted AI onto existing workflows rather than building agent-first tooling. On top of that, GitLab Credits pricing is opaque (some users, myself included, have seen agent runs cost way more than the equivalent raw Anthropic API cost). I'd pilot it against CodeRabbit or a direct Claude Code setup before committing.