Low code, low cost

After Anthropic more than doubled its estimate for what the average business will end up spending on its Claude Code tool, from $6 to $13 per developer per day, and GitHub Copilot moved to usage-based billing that effectively scales with output, the assumption that AI will automatically make software development cheaper is starting to look a lot more complicated.

 

 

So, let’s look at why businesses are embracing low-code.

 

 

The real cost of AI coding

For a while, the mantra of using AI to generate more code than a human could, while watching costs drop, looked like a cost-cutting dream.

 

However, AI providers who are feeling the strain on their infrastructure have started raising their prices, and the costs of using their tools are only going up. As a result, some businesses have even seen a single employee rack up over $150,000 in AI tokens in a single month.

 

With 84% of developers already using or planning to use AI coding tools, a few extra pounds a day doesn’t sound like much. But those costs compound across teams and over time, and the industry is starting to question whether using AI to generate code is actually delivering the ROI they were promised.

 

 

How low-code is reducing costs

Compounding this is the fact that software development is expensive. Hiring developers takes time, training them takes even longer, and external agencies charge heavily based on scope, with every additional request adding to the bill.

 

Low-code addresses these costs on several levels. Teams on the business side can build applications without needing expensive developer hours. Maintenance and updates that would sit in a backlog for weeks can be handled by the people who actually use the software every day. Smaller teams can build more sophisticated tools without proportionally growing their IT budgets.

 

This will have a particularly big impact on SMEs because the type of custom digital tools that used to be exclusive to companies with large IT departments is now something a small team can build and own themselves, without the unpredictable costs that come with using an AI coding tool.

 

 

The advantages of low-code platforms

 

 

 

What this looks like in practice

One of the less obvious benefits of low-code is what it does to how developers spend their time. When routine manual tasks like writing boilerplate code, setting up database schemas and building standard UI components are automated, developers get back to spending their time on the complex, creative problems that drew them to the profession in the first place.

 

This means business requirements get handled faster, so less time is lost in planning cycles and more time is spent on building. Working better with non-technical colleagues also helps make briefs clearer and leads to fewer reworks. For example, a dashboard that gives sales teams real-time stock and revenue data can be built and shipped in days rather than weeks, which frees developers to focus on the harder problems while the rest of the business gets what it needs much quicker.

 

The businesses already using low-code aren’t compromising on quality or capability. They’re shipping faster, working better across teams, and are focusing their expertise on the work that genuinely needs it.

 

The organisations that recognise this and build a culture where low-code and traditional development complement each other will be able to build and adapt faster than those still treating every application as something that has to be built from scratch. 

 

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Frank Böhmer is CEO at Ninox

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and amgun