[BUG] Code Review costs 5-7x stated average ($214 for 2 reviews)

Resolved 💬 3 comments Opened Mar 13, 2026 by adamwestland Closed Apr 10, 2026

Summary

Code Review (research preview) is billing significantly above the documented $15-25 average. Two reviews totaled $214.43 — an average of $107/review.

Environment

  • Plan: Claude for Teams
  • Code Review: enabled via code.claude.com admin settings
  • Trigger: manual (@claude review comments)

Review 1 — Small repo

| Detail | Value |
|--------|-------|
| Repo size | ~109 KB |
| PR | 34 files changed, 473 additions, 136 deletions |
| CLAUDE.md | 11 KB |
| REVIEW.md | 1 KB |
| Duration | ~40 minutes |
| Expected cost | $15-25 |

Review 2 — Large legacy repo

| Detail | Value |
|--------|-------|
| Repo size | Large (PHP monolith) |
| PR | Bug fix (lien releases, oversized doc upload error) |
| CLAUDE.md | ~20 KB |
| REVIEW.md | 0.5 KB |
| Duration | ~29+ minutes |
| Expected cost | $15-25 |

Actual cost

| Source | Amount |
|--------|--------|
| Usage page (MTD spend) | $214.43 |
| Analytics dashboard (weekly cost, Mar 08) | $114.83 |

The two dashboards don't agree — the analytics page shows $114.83 weekly while the usage page shows $214.43 MTD for the same period with only these 2 reviews.

Expected behavior

Per the Code Review docs: "Reviews average $15–25, scaling with PR size, codebase complexity, and how many issues require verification."

Two reviews should cost roughly $30-50 total, not $214.

Additional context

  • The first review was on a tiny repo (109 KB) with a moderate PR — not a large/complex codebase
  • The dashboard discrepancy ($114.83 vs $214.43) suggests a reporting bug in addition to the cost issue
  • Spend cap was set to $1,000 for testing purposes
  • There doesn't appear to be a way to see per-review cost breakdown in either dashboard — only weekly/monthly aggregates. A per-review cost column would help users understand what's driving spend and identify outliers.

Screenshots of both dashboards will be attached below.

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