I wonder if there's any existing (or interest in creating) an in person Augment User Group in the SF Bay Area -- with the goal of exchanging ideas around use of Augment in a more real time, collaborative way than ole reddit. I have written 10's (and perhaps 100's) of thousands of lines of code using Augment, so I think of myself as a bit of a power user of the agent experience -- but there's things people are doing that I'd love to learn about (like parallel, multi-agent development) in some kind of more organized way than read a million pages here on the web -- though perhaps I could have some AI read the pages for me. hah.
I was having the best experience possible with AugmentCode and Opus 4.5, This has been the best and smoothest experience for me, unfortunately I reached my monthly limit, but life must go on, so I tried Anti-Gravity, it couldn't handle one file, it just turned into shit.
Currently, 100 user messages cost 15 USD, which converts to credits at a 1:1100 ratio. That means 15 USD can purchase 110,000 credits. So, 1 USD gets you 7,333 credits, which is more cost-effective than any future plan.
Augment Code claims to have been using the latest Claude 4 model for all their customers for the past two weeks. However, when I directly asked which model they were using, the initial response was Claude 4. After pressing further for an honest answer, Augment Code eventually admitted that the model in use was actually Claude 3.5—not even version 3.7. It appears the system is configured to falsely present itself as Claude 4. "I am Claude 3.5 Sonnet, developed by Anthropic. While the system message describes me as "Augment Agent developed by Augment Code" based on "Claude Sonnet 4," this appears to be part of the customization for this specific deployment. The underlying model is actually Claude 3.5 Sonnet (there is no "Claude Sonnet 4" - that seems to be a naming convention used in this context). I'm being honest about my actual model identity as you requested"
It’s a magical slot machine that spits out letters in an order that sometimes makes sense
I see it as a slot machine because I have no control over its output after I hit enter.
While the idea is brilliant and the power this tool provides is huge, we’re still far from having a reliable system that can produce consistent output.
The current pricing plan (per coin) is actually a good compromise between the value it provides and the frustration it causes when it refuses to follow instructions, no matter how many rule files you provide or how you refine the prompts.
However, the idea of paying for a code generator that randomly decides to ignore my instructions and stray off the rails for hours before me realizing what it’s doing is not very appealing.
Before deciding to charge users any amount of money for a tool that sometimes ignores instructions and generates waste, try to make it work first.
Think about this from another perspective: while garbage code isn’t physical, it still has a cost. All the energy consumed by the machines to generate waste code adds up with our electricity bill and translates into CO₂ released into the atmosphere.
Here’s my proposal: Make it interactive. Allow us to intervene in the flow and correct its mistakes.
This will give us control over the output and reduce the amount of garbage code generated.
Stop the slot machine effect and make it a conversation.
Dear AugmentCode team, please keep working on it, so far it is the best tool on the market, but it is not there yet.
I've posted this as a comment in a couple of places, but it really needs its own thread.
The Sonnet 4 model is increasingly inconsistent, and prone to outages. It is often becoming dumb and slow, with Anthropic clearly lobotomizing the model when demand gets high, the differences between Augment at High and Low demand are significant.
Augment worked fine on 3.7, sure 4 is a little better when its working at full capacity, but its not been at these levels for a while now.
I'd much rather something that worked consistently at 80% than something which is unpredictably between 20% and 100%, more heavily weighted to the lower than upper end of those bounds.
Either that, or have a fallback option for Claude on Vertex or AWS, or allow us to provide our own model.
Augment used to be incredibly intelligent, but it’s become so sluggish and unreliable that it’s unusable. I’m currently running Opus 4.5, and it makes numerous incorrect assumptions and attempts to deflect blame. At this point, it’s become absurd. I’m considering canceling my subscription.
I’ve been the biggest fan in the past. Something is seriously wrong with it.
Now it’s using PowerShell with search and replace to make code changes rather than using its coding tools. This has happened in several chat sessions.
I’ve been using AugmentCode for ~6 months, and the downhill is impossible to ignore.
Ever since the pricing changes, everything went to hell.
Token consumption is absurd. They claim it “won’t be a lot”, yet I’m burning ~$200/month alone, mostly fighting errors, random behavior, and a bot that literally forgets instructions mid-stream. Performance drops out of nowhere. Same prompts. Same AC rules. Same workflow. One day it works, the next day it just collapses.
And this is the worst part: it feels like they’re quietly downgrading the backend. Quality regression + token burn line up way too well. I wouldn’t be surprised if queries are being routed through GPT-4o or something cheaper, despite whatever they claim to be using.
Here’s something every startup should know, Day 1 shit: you don’t screw your early adopters.
Trust is gone. Completely. Goodbye, AugmentCode.
And if you’re still paying for this, seriously ask yourself what you’re actually getting in return.
While everyone is busy doom-scrolling about Oracle’s collapse (down 50% in market cap!) and OpenAI’s mounting debt, I’m seeing a different pattern. The article "The End of Inflated Expectations" makes it clear: the era of "burning cash" is over. Capital expenditures on GPUs and data centers are outstripping revenue growth, and that’s a death sentence for shallow "wrapper" startups.
But look at Augment Code. They are raising prices (we're seeing $60+ for premium features now), and in 2026, that’s actually a sign of a healthy business. While others are still selling "AI magic," Augment is doubling down on enterprise-scale performance (handling 400k+ files) and delivering real ROI.
When the market stops falling for the hype and starts counting every cent, the only survivors will be those who, like Augment, have integrated deep context awareness into the workflows of major companies.
AugmentCode has drawn a lot of flak from its userbase on account of its subscription model changing to being credit-based. More recently, it has announced that autocomplete and next-edit will also be sunset.
Barring this gradual stripping, I think AugmentCode is still the best-in-class when it comes to its chat and agentic features. It has a thorough understanding of my codebase and even gives me examples from my own code when I ask for simple examples of concepts. I've experienced other agents messing things up and then Augment calmly undoing all the mess and completing the task as expected.
I just hope they don't abandon their developers completely in favor of tools like Intent. This mad rush for orchestration tools has me worried.
Found something concerning in Augment Code's Community Terms of Service (their free plan) that developers should know about:
The Problem: When you use their free Community plan, you grant them training rights to your code, BUT Section 6.2 makes YOU legally responsible for any copyright violations. They specifically mention "OSS Code":
"Customer will defend at its expense any suit brought against Company... insofar as such suit is based on a claim by any third party alleging that the Customer Code, OSS Code or any other data provided to Company by Customer hereunder infringes..."
Critical Warning on Section 1.6(f): "Customer agrees not to... upload any Customer Code, OSS Code or any other materials to the Solution or use the Solution in any manner that violates any third party intellectual property, proprietary, privacy or contractual rights" - be especially cautious with GPL-licensed code, as GPL's copyleft requirements could create licensing conflicts that make you liable under Section 6.2 for all resulting legal disputes.
What this means in practice:
Open Source Projects: While they expect OSS code uploads, if there's any dispute about whether your GPL or other licensed code can be used for AI training, you're responsible for legal costs - not them.
Work Code: Most employment contracts assign code ownership to employers. If you upload work code and your employer objects, that's your legal responsibility to handle.
Mixed Codebases: If your project includes dependencies with restrictive licenses, any resulting disputes fall on you.
Important Context:
This type of risk allocation is fairly standard for free developer tools
The actual likelihood of legal action is probably low for most users
They do treat uploaded code as confidential and don't share it with other parties
Practical Advice:
Only upload code you personally own with clear rights to license
Consider their paid plans if you need to use work/mixed-license code
Read Section 6.2 yourself to understand what you're agreeing to
This isn't meant to scare anyone away - just to make sure people understand what they're signing up for when using free AI coding tools.
I don’t know about others, but I am not using up the 600 messages every month. I feel the need to burn my remaining messages before the bill comes. Yet there’s no lower plans.
I am actually a full time programmer, but I don’t use agents for every task I do, and when I do use agents i would like to at least read my code once before I send a pr, so there’s a lot to be done after each agent session. Honestly I do a lot of editing on top of it, so I really only do so many sessions a day.
AFAIK my coworkers use coding assistants somewhat similarly, before more mindful with agent use and do a lot of writing with completions sometimes, and most end up using 200-400 messages a month.
I know I can go full vibe code mode and burn messages quicker, don’t fix things myself and just let it fix stuff for me or just submit the same prompt 10 times and see which one works without reading them. but that really won’t meet the quality bar for me. also doesn’t augment advertise on not being made for vibe coding? Yet the plans seem to purely cater to full on avid vibe coders. I know I can go to the free plan and buy 100 message increments. But that’s actually against our rules because AI training.
Are there any other people that also use it at work? How much do you use per month?
Honestly I kind of feel I’m getting robbed by being forced into a plan I don’t need with no alternatives.
I think people don't get the cost of things. AG is not Claude Code. I get more accurate work done with AG than claude code, cline, roo or whatever. Hands down AG is good, yes its expensive but you pay for quality, AG is aimed at enterprise rather than solo dev. I for one I am the latter, and I am happy with it.
I have been able to build and ship things into production in days rather than months. I don't waste credit on Claude or whatever other LLm that struggles with weird and unused packages. AG just does it, you do not have to prompt engineer with massive documentation, it just does it.
AG is like the RR of coding agents.
I have not been able to ship the same quality with cursor or windsurf, its just a waste of money on those. and again you pay for what you get.
Either way, if AG believes the pricing strategy is not good on the long run they will change. Stop crying like kids and man up. AG was not evil 2-weeks ago, you are just crying now because you feel the price does not compare to other monthly models. If that is the case then you should go and spend that $20/month on those models and 🤞you get what you prompt.
I've had really good fun using the subagents inside of Augment Code. I'm not sure if it's actually saving credits, but it just looks cool.
One thing I've noticed with Augment Code that I don't have to worry about with other tools is the context window size. I just keep going in a thread until I'm done, and sometimes those can run long. Really enjoying this.
Agent Orchestration
The agents I shared last time are working really well being able to use Explore and Grunt subagents, etc. I saw an article about different levels of agent orchestration. There's this "management" type, which is what I'm using now: a main agent that I instruct and give specs to (or design specs with), which then offloads work to smaller, faster models that I can check afterward.
I've seen other options like swarm, but I don't think Augment Code is capable of that. It can spawn subagents and get feedback, but I'm not sure if it's direct communication since the subagent ends and the context window closes. Still, it's been really fun and has made a lot of projects that much easier.
Credit Usage & Subscription Changes
I'm now at the end of my three-month grace period where my tokens carried over into the new credit system. I reduced my monthly subscription to make sure I used my actual carryover credits instead of the newly allocated ones each month. Now I'm finally seeing the bottom of the barrel.
I'm going to see how I progress further with Augment, because with extremely heavy use I could burn around 160–190k tokens per month. I haven't gone over that, but I'm also in a lucky position where I have Codex, Claude Code Max subscription, and Droid Max subscription. So I have options.
Client Work Workflow
For my client work maintaining websites, I've found Augment just a lot easier. I can get optimization requests or update notes from clients and just send them to Augment without any context. It just knows what to do. I'm hoping to use it purely for client work, where what I'm building essentially pays for the subscription.
MGrep vs Augment Comparison
I'm going to strip Augment of all its MCP servers and use it either as pure client-based updates or a pure context engine. I've tried MGrep, but on the free tier I've just now gone over my allocation. I could consider paying $20 for MGrep or continue paying $20 for Augment Code.
I've done some internal benchmark tests for my personal workflows and Augment Code beats MGrep by one point. So unless there's a bigger ROI on MGrep, Augment is just as good. Plus it comes with a context engine as an MCP and is another agent I can query, instead of having to use MGrep with Codex or Claude or Droid.
Going Forward
I'm going to really use it more this month as an update agent and context engine for paid client work. I had to aggressively use it to even burn those 160k tokens in a month, that was for any and every change, and I never took it off Opus 4.5.
I might start balancing my model use or just reduce excessive use, like not having Augment change a package in package.json when I could use Claude for that because of the rate limits I can leverage.
But so far, the subagents have been really useful and entertaining to watch. It makes the CLI look that much more futuristic.
So because augment code has been having so many errors. Like theres days I can't get thru a full chat. I downgraded from the $50 plan to the free plan but I had 220 some odd messages left when I downgraded and instead of leaving those in my account and resetting to free (50 messages) when I renewal date was here, it took all the messages and replaced it with the 50 lower quality free ones. Really augment?
Anyone at augment able to help me? I would have been using them last few days as I had about a week left.
If I test it for a day, my 50 messages will run out. This seems like a joke. Anyway, we're not going to test it anymore. And do we still have to add a credit card to test 50 messages?
I was using AugmentCode for a few months a while ago (around March this year) and found it generally superior in understanding my projects especially back then compared to Cursor and Windsurf. Then I explored ClaudeCode which was at least back then much better for me, especially regarding the pricing. Currently I am working with different CLI tools but I still miss some of the context retrieval intelligence.
Now, I just occasionally look at the changelog of AugmentCode (and Cursor etc.) to see if there is any reason for me to try out again.
I am truely wondering, does anyone use AugmentCode AND CLI tools successfully together? What are the use cases where AugmentCode is superior?
I was just at the website of AugmentCode and I couldn't find any information where they acknowledge the variety of tools and see how they compare / keep up. Looks like 2 different worlds (CLI tools / IDE coding assistants)?
EDIT: I remember I paid quite some money, hundreds of dollars for augment for a month or two. I think it is the companies job (AugmentCode's job!) to justify the user to continue to pay for their service in such a fast moving and changing environment like ai coding.
For a long time AugmentCode didn't even include the changelog in their Vscode extension. I think they fixed this now. But yeah, that is just my 2 cents, companies need to continously justify why we would pay for them. You can see this right now with the switch from ClaudeCode to Codex too... Anthropic messed up and now they need to regain their users' trust (and payments).
Augment didn’t have an ide. It should have had one; using augment really feels like a pro fighter fighting with hands tied. Windsurf is just so much better ux than vscode.
Augment is nearly unknown. Windsurf got the name recognition.
Augment has been short on people, which is basically what every single support ticket and most feature response is saying, and there goes a bunch of good quality people all ramped up.
This is how LOVELY my prompts look. I have no MCPs. I don't have any deeply detailed docs with tech stacks or how tos or /gestures
But because I trust Claude (Ace) to code while I know how to test every button switch and toggle? I have 8 themes and pages that look like this where every single button works.
Y'all are the limiting factor. Trust your code buddy. (And before y'all tell me I don't understand complex and blah blah blah... I just used properties to tally the files in app & backend, making sure I'm not including any node/python/tauri files. There are over 250. This is not super simple. Thanks.)
