Code Review for Claude Code

3/9/2026 at 10:14:02 PM

> We've been running Code Review internally for months: on large PRs (over 1,000 lines changed), 84% get findings, averaging 7.5 issues. On small PRs under 50 lines, that drops to 31%, averaging 0.5 issues. Engineers largely agree with what it surfaces: less than 1% of findings are marked incorrect.

So the take would be that 84% heavily Claude driven PRs are riddled with ~7.5 issues worthy bugs.

Not a great ad of agent based development quality.

by xlii

3/9/2026 at 11:36:13 PM

Or, just spin up your own review workflow, I've been doing this for the past couple of months after experimenting with Greptile and it works pretty well, example setup below:

https://gist.github.com/rlueder/a3e7b1eb40d90c29f587a4a8cb7c...

An average of $0.04/review (200+ PRs with two rounds each approx.) total of $19.50 using Opus 4.6 over February.

It fills in a gap of working on a solo project and not having another set of eyes to look at changes.

by raflueder

3/9/2026 at 7:50:07 PM

Interesting: "Reviews are billed on token usage and generally average $15–25, scaling with PR size and complexity."

by CharlesW

3/9/2026 at 8:44:44 PM

This cost seems wild. For comparison GitHub Copilot Code Review is four cents per review once you're outside of the credits included with your subscription.

by cbovis

3/9/2026 at 10:50:12 PM

Same thoughts.

For comparison, Greptile charges $30 per month for 50 reviews, with $1 per additional review.

At average of $15~25 per review, this is way more expensive.

by 8cvor6j844qw_d6

3/9/2026 at 11:34:31 PM

Yea, but copilot review is useless. The noise it generates easily costs that much in wasted time.

by SkyPuncher

3/9/2026 at 11:37:07 PM

Senior+ engineers easily make $100+ an hour. This is equivalent to 15 minutes of their time max.

I run a PR review via Claude on my own code before I push. It’s exceptionally good. $20 becomes an incredibly easy sell when I can review a PR in 10 minutes instead of an hour.

by SkyPuncher

3/9/2026 at 9:56:29 PM

Average _per review_? Insane costs, that's potentially thousands per developer. Am I missing something?

by Twixes

3/9/2026 at 10:32:22 PM

I haven't used it so just spit balling, but surely it depends on the quality of the review? If it picks up lots of issues and prevents downtime then it could work out as worthwhile. What would it cost an engineer with deep knowledge of the codebase to do a similar job? You could spend an hour really digging into a PR, poking around, testing stuff out etc. Im guessing most engineers are paid more than $15-25/hr, not to mention the opportunity cost.

by remus

3/9/2026 at 8:07:08 PM

At those prices I wonder if it also reviews the design for ineffectiveness in performance or decomposition into maintainable units besides catching the bugs.

Also the examples are weird IMO. Unless it was an edge/corner case the authentication bug would be caught in even a smoke test. And for the ZFS encryption refactor I'd expect a static-typed language to catch type errors unless they're casting from `void*` or something. Seems like they picked examples by how important/newsworthy the areas were than the technicality of the finds.

by karmakaze

3/9/2026 at 9:29:27 PM

Wait, what? So if I'm a paying Max user, i'd still have to pay more? Don't see the value. Would rather have a repo skill to do the code review with existing Claude Max tokens.

by atonse

3/10/2026 at 12:02:04 AM

So their business model is to deliver me buggy code and then charge me to fix it?

by nemo44x

3/9/2026 at 9:59:56 PM

Does AI review of AI generated code even make sense?

by cpncrunch

3/9/2026 at 8:05:07 PM

nice but why is this not a system prompt? what's the value add here?

by simianwords

3/9/2026 at 8:31:21 PM

You're paying the same token rate for this as you would if it was just a system prompt. Clearly the scaffolding adds something.

(They mention their github action which seems more like a system prompt)

by NoahZuniga

3/9/2026 at 8:34:58 PM

seems like a very small value add. why is this a blog post - i could do this myself.

by simianwords

3/9/2026 at 9:25:57 PM

Does this only work with github actions? What about Devops and gitlab?

by sixothree

3/9/2026 at 8:23:45 PM

what are the implications for the tens of code review platforms that have recently raised on sky high valuations?

by Bnjoroge

3/9/2026 at 11:21:58 PM

There might still be plenty of room to compete, especially at $15-$25 per review. I'm starting to feel like the right harness makes more difference than the right model.

The real competition for both claude and the platforms is a skill running locally against the very same code.

by lbreakjai

3/9/2026 at 8:35:06 PM

Same as all the other companies that built on top of the API and then were obsoleted after the API provider made it a built-in feature.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/claude-just-killed-startup-sf...

by satvikpendem

3/10/2026 at 12:23:07 AM

Reminds me of a post here (or maybe it was on another forum) about someone who built a tool for their own use but deliberately chose not to develop it into a product, citing insufficient moat. Seems like they read the room correctly.

by 8cvor6j844qw_d6

3/9/2026 at 10:17:48 PM

bitter lesson applied to platforms

by Bnjoroge

3/9/2026 at 9:25:20 PM

I'm guessing people need to quickly realize Claude is a platform.

by sixothree

3/9/2026 at 10:15:52 PM

> Reviews are billed on token usage and generally average $15–25, scaling with PR size and complexity.

You've got to be completely insane to use AI coding tools at this point.

This is the subsidised cost to get users to use it, it could trivially end up ten times this amount. Plus, you've got the ultimate perverse incentive where the company that is selling you the model time to create the PRs is also selling you the review of the same PR.

by lowsong