How My First Claude Code on AWS Bedrock Experiment Cost Me $8.43 in Just One Day
My AWS Bedrock Experiment Cost Me $8.43 in Just One Day What I learned about AWS Bedrock pricing the hard way, and why budget alerts saved me Why I Even Tried Claude Code on Bedrock I have been using Claude Code for a while now, connected to Anthropic directly. It works well. But two things were bothering me. First, the usage limits. Claude Code on Anthropic's native setup has 5hours session limit and a weekly usage cap. Once you hit it, you have to wait. If you are in the middle of something or just want to experiment freely, that gets frustrating fast. Second, billing. I already manage everything on AWS. I'm very familiar with it, the invoices go to one place, and I understand how to track and control costs there. Adding a separate Anthropic subscription meant one more billing account, one more credit card charge, one more thing to track. I just wanted everything under one roof. So I thought, why not try Claude Code connected to Amazon Bedrock? Same tool, runs on AWS, billed through AWS. Seemed like a clean solution to both problems. What happened next is why I am writing this post. The Two Ways to Run Claude Code Most people do not realise Claude Code can be configured to run in two different ways. Option 1: Claude Code via Anthropic directly You connect Claude Code to Anthropic's API or use it under your Claude subscription. Billing goes through Anthropic. If you are on a subscription plan, you pay a flat monthly fee and the usage limits apply to how much you can do within that. Option 2: Claude Code via Amazon Bedrock You connect Claude Code to AWS Bedrock as the backend. Same Claude models, but now AWS is your provider. Billing goes through your AWS account. No Anthropic subscription needed. From the outside, it looks and feels the same. But the billing model underneath is completely different, and that is where things get interesting. What Happened When I Tried It I set up Claude Code to use Bedrock and gave it a prompt. A fairly detailed one, nothing unusual