$25 per PR

$25 per PR seems like a lot - or is it just a start?*

Anthropic named the price for PR review. It averages between $15-$25 per pull request.

PR is a vague representation of unit of work:

• An entire new feature implemented with tests
• A bug fix
• A typo correction

On one hand, in such a price model we want to get the most out of each PR = more changes = more lines of code = bigger batch size.

On the other hand, smaller PRs are easier to merge and review. Less lines of code = smaller batch size.

If there’s something we’ve learned from the DevOps movement** - smaller batches are more efficient to implement.

They allow for quick feedback loops.

Smaller batches simply win.

So, which way should we go?

*LLMs are heavily subsidised and as such we don’t pay near as much as we should. I wonder if that price tag is an attempt to gauge the market to pay more real-life prices.

**We actually know it from a great book: The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt.