Turbo AI Cut a $30,000 Claude Code Bill by Disabling Fast Mode
Updated
Updated · Business Insider · Jul 9
Turbo AI Cut a $30,000 Claude Code Bill by Disabling Fast Mode
1 articles · Updated · Business Insider · Jul 9
Summary
$30,000 in monthly Claude Code token spending fell after Turbo AI discovered founder Sarthak Dhawan had left Anthropic's fast mode on, a setting that sharply raises per-token costs.
Switching back to normal mode barely changed output speed or quality, so the startup now uses fast mode only when pairing and latency matters.
Turbo AI, a roughly 10-person team, still spends about $20,000 a month on AI development tools and says it has no strict token budget as long as usage boosts output.
Dhawan said the company takes only easy savings—using standard mode by default, lighter models for simple tasks, and avoiding huge codebase context dumps—while prioritizing shipping speed.
The startup launched in January 2024, later dropped out of college to run it full-time, and says it has now crossed $13 million in lifetime revenue.