AI coding token costs are on track to rival human payroll

Enterprises may soon be paying as much for their developers’ AI token usage as they do for their salaries. According to Gartner , these costs will meet, or even exceed, the typical software engineer’s monthly salary within the next two years. This is not only because developers are increasingly adopting generative AI and agentic tools , it reflects a trend toward consumption-based licensing models as vendors balance infrastructure investments with profitability.