AI coding cost will surpass average developers’ salary by 2028: Gartner

The artificial intelligence (AI) coding costs will overtake the average developers’ salary by 2028 due to rising large language model (LLM) token consumption and the shift to consumption-based licensing models, according to Gartner. AI tokens are the units of data processed by generative AI models. Token consumption directly impacts the cost of AI coding tools, particularly under consumption-based pricing structures.