Uber 的预算管控案例给所有重度使用 AI 编程工具的团队敲了警钟——token 烧钱速度远超预期，做技术选型和预算规划的工程管理者值得看看这个 11% 的薪资占比参考线。
Uber 在 2026 年前四个月就超支了全年 AI 预算，随后对员工使用 Cursor、Claude Code 等 AI 编程工具设置了每月 1500 美元的额度上限。这一政策比之前鼓励员工比拼 AI 使用量的做法更理性，也暗示了 Uber 对 AI 工具实际价值的评估。按每位工程师使用两个工具计算，年上限约 3.6 万美元，相当于其年薪中位数 33 万美元的 11%。作者个人每月 token 花费约 1000 美元，但因个人订阅计划更便宜，实际支出仅 100 美元，若在 Uber 工作仍有 500 美元余量。
Uber Caps Usage of AI Tools Like Claude Code to Manage Costs
Uber Caps Usage of AI Tools Like Claude Code to Manage Costs I wrote the other day about Uber blowing its 2026 AI budget in four months, and how that wasn't particularly surprising given they would have set that budget in 2025, before anyone could have predicted how popular token-burning coding agents were about to become. Natalie Lung for Bloomberg: The rideshare giant is limiting all employees to $1,500 in monthly token spending per AI coding tool, an Uber spokesperson said in response to a Bloomberg News inquiry. That means spending on one tool doesn’t have a bearing on the budget for another. The limits, which have been instituted in recent months, only apply to agentic coding software such as Cursor or Anthropic PBC’s Claude Code. A $1,500 monthly limit per tool strikes me as much more sensible than those tokenmaxxing leaderboards encouraging employees to compete for as much AI usage as possible, and as a rational policy response to over-spending. It's also interesting in that it hints at a real dollar value for what Uber is getting out of these tools. If we assume two actively used tools per engineer that's $3,000 * 12 = $36,000 cap per engineer per year. Levels.fyi lists the median yearly compensation package for Uber software engineers in the USA at $330,000. That means each employee's AI spending cap is ~11% of that median compensation package. I noted that my own token usage comes to about $1,000/month against each of Anthropic and OpenAI - which currently costs me just $100 per provider thanks to their generous subsidized plans for individual subscribers - plans that are no longer available to larger companies like Uber. That means if I were working at Uber I'd still have ~$500/month of tokens to spare for each of those tools, given my current usage patterns. Tags: ai , generative-ai , llms , llm-pricing , coding-agents , uber