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RTK reports huge token savings, but our cost benchmarks disagree - Quesma Blog

AchievementBenchmarkSep 11, 2026

Quesma's benchmark of RTK on Terminal-Bench 2.1, covering 1,740 attempts, found token filtering does not reliably reduce coding costs: Claude Code costs fell 5% while OpenCode costs rose 5%, and pass rates dropped slightly. JetBrains's SkillsBench run found no savings. Quesma notes RTK's "rtk gain" metric counts removed output, not billed tokens, and terminal output is a small share of total cost.

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Claude CodeModelJetBrainsCompanyOpenCodeModelQuesmaCompany
Canonical: https://quesma.com/blog/does-rtk-make-ai-coding-cheaper/