Hi - I have enabled Anthropic API Key in the Cursor settings but why does it still count towards the Cursor usage? Also the displayed tokens count seems quite off - not sure how a simple rebase request costed 2.3M tokens?
Hi @djmf Thanks for the forum post! Happy to clear this up. Both of these are actually expected behavior rather than a bug.
On the API key: bringing your own Anthropic key means you pay Anthropic directly for the raw model tokens, but it doesn’t mean zero usage of Cursor. Even with your key, requests still route through Cursor’s backend for things like prompt building, routing, and codebase indexing, so a small Cursor Token Rate ($0.25 / 1M tokens) still applies to non-Auto requests. The only way to avoid that rate is to use the Auto model (which doesn’t use BYOK). More detail here: Cursor Token Rate | Cursor Docs
On the 2.3M tokens: that number is normal for an agent task like a rebase. In Agent mode, every tool call and follow-up is a separate request that re-sends the full chat history, system prompt, and previous results, so tokens add up quickly across many steps. The large majority of that count is typically cache-read tokens, which are ~10x cheaper than fresh input — so the headline number looks big, but the actual cost is small.
Hope that helps clarify things! Happy to dig into your specific usage if anything still looks off.