Providers
Claude (Area-Based)
How Anthropic Claude bills image tokens and how VisionSqueezer minimizes area cost.
How Claude bills images
Claude (Anthropic) bills images by pixel area, not tiles:
tokens ≈ (Width × Height) / 750
There is no tile grid to snap to — every single pixel of the image, including solid-color padding, contributes directly to the token count.
Optimization strategy
Because cost scales with raw area, the winning move is to maximize useful resolution while minimizing pixel count:
- Strip all non-essential padding. Solid borders are pure waste under area billing.
- Snap-down resize only when the image exceeds what the task needs.
VisionSqueezer aggressively crops solid borders and preserves the high-information region, shaving thousands of tokens without downscaling the content that matters.
Terminal
vision-squeezer screenshot.png --model claude
Example
A standard 2400×1670 screenshot targeted at Claude:
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Resolution | 2400×1670 | 2304×1536 |
| Tokens | 5,344 | 4,718 |
| Savings | — | 626 tokens (-11.7%) |
By targeting Claude, Squeezer preserves the massive 2304×1536 resolution and solely trims solid padding — minimizing token cost via the area-based formula rather than throwing away detail.
For screenshots with solid borders, the default corner-tolerance crop is ideal. For photographic content, add
--smart-crop.