How NestClaw Saves You 50% on Claude Sonnet & Opus with Smart Context Trimming
Anthropic quietly introduced tiered pricing for their latest Claude models — and if you’re not paying attention, your AI agent could be costing you double without you realizing it.
Here’s the deal: Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Opus 4.6 both have a 200K token threshold. Stay under it, and you’re paying the standard rate. Go over it, and every token in that request — input and output — gets charged at premium rates.
Here’s what the pricing looks like (from Anthropic’s pricing page):
| Model | ≤ 200K input tokens | > 200K input tokens | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sonnet 4.6 | Input | $3 / MTok | $6 / MTok |
| Output | $15 / MTok | $22.50 / MTok | |
| Opus 4.6 | Input | $5 / MTok | $10 / MTok |
| Output | $25 / MTok | $37.50 / MTok |
The moment your prompt crosses 200K tokens, your entire request costs up to 2x more.
Why This Matters for AI Agents
If you’re chatting with Claude through the API once or twice, you’ll never hit 200K tokens. But AI agents are different. They accumulate context fast:
- System prompts with personality and instructions
- Conversation history from earlier in the session
- Tool call results (web searches, file reads, code execution output)
- Agent workspace files and memory
A busy OpenClaw agent can easily build up a 300K+ token context window over the course of a work session. And once it crosses that 200K line, every single request from that point forward costs double — even if the actual new content is just a short user message.
What NestClaw Does About It
I built smart context trimming directly into NestClaw’s proxy layer. When enabled, it automatically keeps your prompts under 200K tokens before they reach Anthropic’s API.
Here’s how it works:
- Your OpenClaw agent builds its full prompt as usual — system message, conversation history, tool results, everything
- The request passes through NestClaw’s proxy on its way to Anthropic
- The proxy estimates the token count (before Anthropic sees it)
- If it’s over 190K tokens, the oldest conversation messages are trimmed to bring it back under the threshold
- A system note is injected so the AI knows earlier context was removed and won’t hallucinate references to it
- The trimmed request reaches Anthropic at the lower pricing tier
The 190K threshold gives a 10K token safety margin below the 200K boundary. System messages and the most recent messages are always preserved — only older conversation history gets trimmed, which is the least relevant context anyway.
It’s Automatic
When you deploy a Sonnet 4.6 or Opus 4.6 instance on NestClaw, smart context trimming is enabled by default. You don’t need to configure anything. Your agent just starts saving money from the first message.
If you want to disable it (maybe you need full conversation history for your use case), there’s a toggle in the instance Settings modal under “Long Context Optimization.” You can also toggle per-message token usage display, which shows you exactly how many input and output tokens each response consumed — helpful for keeping an eye on spend.
The Math
Let’s say your agent averages 250K input tokens per request over a busy session. Without trimming:
- Sonnet 4.6: 250K tokens × $6/MTok = $1.50 per request
- With trimming: 190K tokens × $3/MTok = $0.57 per request
- Savings: 62%
For Opus 4.6 it’s even more dramatic because the base rates are higher:
- Opus 4.6: 250K tokens × $10/MTok = $2.50 per request
- With trimming: 190K tokens × $5/MTok = $0.95 per request
- Savings: 62%
Over hundreds of agent interactions per day, this adds up fast.
Token Usage Visibility
The other half of this feature is transparency. When “Show token usage” is enabled, every assistant response in the chat shows the actual input and output token counts — something like 48.2K in / 1.3K out displayed below the message bubble.
This gives you real visibility into what your agent is costing per message, without having to dig through billing dashboards. If you see input tokens creeping toward 200K, you know the trimming is about to kick in and save you money.
Try It
If you’re running an AI agent on Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Opus 4.6, this is free money on the table. NestClaw handles it automatically — no code changes, no configuration, no manual prompt management.
Head over to nestclaw.com and deploy an instance. Pick Sonnet 4.6 as your model, and the optimization is live from the start. Your agent works exactly the same, just cheaper.