15 ms·

Reallocating $100/Month Claude Code Spend to Zed and OpenRouter

349 points by kisamoto 6mo ago

hhthrowaway1230 6mo ago
note: doesn't openrouter charge 5.5% fee?
- kisamoto 6mo ago
  You are absolutely correct, I was not aware of this. I will update the article accordingly and perhaps it's more worthwhile to stay solely on Cursor with the limited models. Sadly Zed seems to add 10% so it's still more worthwhile to use OpenRouter.
  - Kelteseth 6mo ago
    Come on at least write the Hackernews replies yourself.
    - kisamoto 6mo ago
      I did. Perhaps too much consumption of AI responses but articles and engagement are written by me - a human.
      - cbg0 6mo ago
        That's exactly what a clanker would say. ^/s
    - glitchcrab 6mo ago
      Only the opening sentence has an AI smell; the rest is definitely written by a fleshy meatbag
  - cedws 6mo ago
    I feel like a bit of an idiot because I didn’t know this either. I just assumed OR was another startup burning money to provide models at cost. OpenRouter is a valuable service but I’ll probably try to run my own router going forward.
  - giancarlostoro 6mo ago
    Look again, they don't charge that fee until after "1M requests per month" whatever that means? Oh that's if you bring your own provider keys. https://openrouter.ai/docs/guides/overview/auth/byok https://openrouter.ai/docs/guides/overview/auth/byok
Computer0 6mo ago
When I use the tool ccusage it says I use $600 of usage a month for my $100. I don’t know that this is a good value proposition for me if I want to stay with the same model, half the reason I use Claude code, personally.
- blitzar 6mo ago
  > Reallocating $100/Month Claude Code Spend The new gimped claude code limits means my claude code spend the last month is $131. It cost me $20. I did an additional spend $5 on extra usage which cost me $5. While VC's are setting fire to money I am going to warm my hands.
  - 542458 6mo ago
    I think it is worth noting that “what they charge for api access” != “marginal cost of inference”. So I don’t think getting i.e. $40 of api usage for $20 would be insane. $131 for $20 does probably mean somebody is losing money though.
  - andai 6mo ago
    You mean you were getting more than $130 per $20 before? 85% discount is actually a bit lower than I remember. I think it used to be closer to 90-95%. They're getting stingy ;)
    - blitzar 6mo ago
      I think it was around $400-$500 last year ($20 a day was fairly common) before they added the 7 day limits (and have since slashed the 4 hour limits). No parallel running; I would very consistently get tokens for over 3 hours then take a walk around the block and come back and be ready to go again.
- vanillameow 6mo ago
  I ran this just now and for a small web-app I built I used over $50 in a single day. This was using superpowers plugin and almost exclusively coordinating through Opus. Could I get by with 100$ a month without the subscription? Maybe, but I pay for the convenience of just being able to throw Opus with lavish plugins at it (with 5h limits that are, in my opinion, pretty reasonable). I don't really WANT to have to think about when Haiku or Sonnet are enough. If anything I would consider switching to OpenAI subscription (if I didn't despise them even more than Anthropic as a company), but converting to API use seems completely infeasible to me. I'd have to severely cut back on my use for not much benefit, other than having maybe an agent thats a little less jank than CC.
Computer0 6mo ago
I have had credits on open router that haven’t been deleted since near the projects launch, I believe 365 days is not a rule but rather a right reserved.
- numlocked 6mo ago
  COO of OpenRouter here. Thats right — we haven’t done it to date but we can’t have unlimited liabilities stacking up forever. At some point we will start expiring credits from accounts that have seen zero activity in over a year.
  - kisamoto 6mo ago
    Thank you for taking the time to explain that - makes sense. I lifted what was present in your terms of service as I'd like to understand the minimum time I have.
  - threatofrain 6mo ago
    In CA gift cards don’t expire and the industry does fine without having people buy expiring money.
  - blitzar 6mo ago
    Maybe a bad suggestion, but can you do an inactivity "fee" - 25% / year (min $5) or something similar. I like the pre-pay system everyone in Ai seems to have settled on, its better than the AWS bills that we all know and love.
  - indigodaddy 6mo ago
    What if I deposited $10, and have lots of recent activity on free models and have barely touched the $10 for payg models?
  - ac29 6mo ago
    > we can’t have unlimited liabilities stacking up forever The liabilities are completely offset by prepayments from your customers though. Even better, you can earn interest on the deposits without paying any out. If you just dont want the liabilities on the books, issue refunds. Expiring credits feels like a cash grab.
Serberus 6mo ago
[dead]
philipp-gayret 6mo ago
I like and do use Zed but be aware functionality like Hooks is not supported for their integration with Claude Code, as a heavy user of Hooks I would stick with the terminal.
- kisamoto 6mo ago
  I'm always interested in how people use tools. I like to have a full editor to review code as a complement to the CLI and as I don't often use hooks the integration is also good enough for me. 1. What do you use the hooks for? 2. Do you use an editor alongside the CLI to review code or only examine the diffs?
  - philipp-gayret 6mo ago
    > 1. What do you use the hooks for? I use hooks to automate decisionmaking (i.e. stronger permissions than a regex by parsing the bash) and similarly automate guidance. Our tooling is open source so here is an example: https://github.com/Devleaps/agent-policies-server/blob/master/policies/universal/gh.rego https://github.com/Devleaps/agent-policies-server/blob/maste... Another example is I whitelist dependencies based on the dependency age, for example a library needs to have been around for a year, then it can do `uv add {dependency}`. As a third example, hooks tell Claude not to write out *_test|debug.py at the root of a project, which for some reason it very often does when it wants to fix some issue. The hooks tell it to write a proper test case using the test framework in place. So instead of having random debug and test scripts everywhere after a long session, I have more test coverage. This is all in the agent-policies-server project linked above. Mainly it reduces interruptions and I don't have to worry about it doing something particularly stupid. (It is not a replacement for sandboxing) > Do you use an editor alongside the CLI to review code or only examine the diffs? I do have the file tree open alongside the CLI, and that is both in Zed. How much of the code I review depends on who owns the code, meaning a client, employer or me. In most cases I review it myself, as for many clients code goes through a peer review process. In some cases the organization uses automated quality metrics and has agents looking at code instead. If agents don't have any more comments, and the quality metrics also approve, it's good enough for them. As for my own personal projects, I look at the code when I feel like it, which is practically never.
bashtoni 6mo ago
After hitting Claude limits today I spent the afternoon using OpenCode + GLM 5.1 via OpenRouter and I was very impressed. OpenCode picked up my CLAUDE.md files and skills straight away, and I got similar performance to Opus 4.6.
- sourcecodeplz 6mo ago
  How much did it cost for how long?
  - BeetleB 6mo ago
    https://z.ai/subscribe https://z.ai/subscribe Many of us got the annual Lite plan when they had the $28 discount. But even at $120 I think it's a good deal.
    - jml78 6mo ago
      I am trying to take this in the more giving way possible, anyone remotely considering that subscription should go on reddit and see all the people experiencing outages constantly and insanely slow speeds when it does work. I have been wanting to subscribe but based on how awful the experience is for most people, I just can’t pull the trigger
      - BeetleB 6mo ago
        At $84, I can understand not taking the risk. But for $28 ... it was worth it. FWIW, I've never dealt with outages since I signed up over 3 months ago (Lite plan). It is slow - always has been. I can live with that. At the same time, I'm not using it for work. It's for the occasional project once in a while. So maybe I just haven't hit any limits? I did use it for OpenClaw for 2-3 weeks. Never had connection issues. Looking at https://docs.z.ai/devpack/faq https://docs.z.ai/devpack/faq you can see the details of their limits. Seems GLM 5.1 has low thresholds, and will get lower starting May. On Reddit I see some people switching to GLM 5 and claiming they haven't hit limits - the site doesn't indicate the limits for that model. They also say that those who subscribed before February have different limits - unsure if it's lower or higher! GLM-4.7 is still a fairly capable model. Not as good as Opus, but for most personal projects it's been adequate. I see on Reddit plenty of people plan using GLM-5.1, and use 4.7 for implementation.
wiether 6mo ago
People may feel differently about the fee that OpenRouter takes, but I think the service they provide is worth the extra cost. Having access to dozens of models through a single API key, tracking cost of each request, being able to run the same request on different models and comparing their results next to each other, separating usages through different API keys, adding your own presets, setting your routing rules... And once you start using an account with multiple users, it's even more useful to have all those features! Not relying on a subscription and having the right to do exactly what you want with your API key (using it with any tool/harness...) is also a big plus to me.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- pixel_popping 6mo ago
  Expect you don't have the right to do what you want with the API Key (see waves of ban lately, many SaaS services have closed because of it).
  - embedding-shape 6mo ago
    Unless you provide some more details, at least outline what "do what you want" was in your case, this seems like just straight up FUD.
    - himata4113 6mo ago
      openrouter accepts crypto so might have been some money laundering involved for reselling dirty crypto for llm api. if that wasn't the reason, hey that's actually a great way to launder money (not financial advice).
      - embedding-shape 6mo ago
        So you pay OpenRouter with cryptocurrencies, which they accept as a payment method, and then what, they block your account because the cryptocurrencies you paid with came from some account on the blockchain associated with other stuff? Or what are you really saying here? I don't understand how that's related to "you don't have the right to do what you want with the API Key", which is the FUD part.
ElFitz 6mo ago
Has anyone (other than OpenClaw) used pi? (https://shittycodingagent.ai/ https://shittycodingagent.ai/, https://pi.dev/ https://pi.dev/) Any insights / suggestions / best practices?
- simgt 6mo ago
  Yes, it's super cool. Check Mario's latest talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dli5slNaJu0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dli5slNaJu0 Armin also has some videos covering it on his channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ArminRonacher/ https://www.youtube.com/@ArminRonacher/ Pi's Discord is still nice, even though it was a bit flooded after the openclaw thing.
- nocobot 6mo ago
  i really have been enjoying pi a lot at first i thought i was goring to build lots of extra plugins and commands but what ended up working for me is: - i have a simpel command that pulls context from a linear issue - simple review command - project specific skills for common tasks
- Daviey 6mo ago
  Reluctantly, the dev seems to have a stinky attitude. He went on an "OSS vacation", which is perfectly reasonable and said he'd be back on a certain date. I had a PR open for a trivial fix, someone asked when it would land. I shared he was still away. After his return I politely asked, "@badlogic hey, what can we do to progress this? Thanks x" I then got what I would consider an abusive reply, because he confused me with someone else. In the meantime he extended his vacation. Didn't even think his shitty attitude was worthy of an apology, that HE confused me with someone else. https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/discussions/1475#discussioncomment-15827978 https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/discussions/1475#discuss... And another other thing I fixed with no attribution, just landed it himself separately. https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/discussions/1080 https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/discussions/1080 and https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/issues/1079#event-22389646699 https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/issues/1079#event-223896... Now he's seemingly marked anything with my name on as a "clanker", despite all my changes being by hand. I've been around open source enough to have a thick skin, but when i'm doing something "for fun" and someone treats you like that, i'd rather avoid it as far as possible. I certainly could not in good faith use this project for anything work related.
i_love_retros 6mo ago
I can't believe people are spending $100 a month on this! You're all mad!
- gozzoo 6mo ago
  some are spending 100/day or even 1000/day. they must really be mad :)
  - i_love_retros 6mo ago
    Drunk on perceived power
    - nubg 6mo ago
      Your ignorance is our opportunity :)
- kisamoto 6mo ago
  I had a similar opinion a couple of years ago, content with more of an autocomplete. Now I'm happy with agents as the models and harnesses have improved significantly but the token usage comes at a cost.
- grebc 6mo ago
  When you consider the cross section of the tech community posting on HN, is it really that surprising? It’s mad for sure, but I’d bet 99.9% of people spending money on AI aren’t spending their own hard earned sooo… “YOLO it’s a business expense/investment”…
- dboreham 6mo ago
  To get the equivalent of a junior developer that would cost $80,000/yr + benefits?
- andrewmcwatters 6mo ago
  [dead]
- 6mo ago
urnfjrkrkn 6mo ago
I would suggest to explore paid plans on different providers. Much better value than plans bundled with editors or API based usage in openrouter. And Chinese companies have versions hosted in Singapore or US. Also ditching Claude Code is mistake. It is quite capable model, and still great value. I would keep it, even if it's just for code reviews and planning. Anthropic allows pro plans use in Zed.
cbg0 6mo ago
I don't think there's currently better value than Github's $40 plan which gives you access to GPT5 & Claude variants. It's pay per request so not ideal for back-and-forth but great for building complex features on the cheap compared to paying per token. Because GH is accessing the API behind the scenes, you should face less degradation when using Sonnet/Opus models compared to a Claude subscription. Keep a ChatGPT $20 subscription alongside for back-and-forth conversations and you'll get great bang for buck.
- rafaelmn 6mo ago
  I'm still paying the 10$ GH copilot but I don't use it because : - context is aggressively trimmed compared to CC obviously for cost saving reasons, so the performance is worse - the request pricing model forces me to adjust how I work Just these alone are not worth saving the 60$/month for me. I like the VSCode integration and the MCP/LSP usage surprised me sometimes over the dumb grep from CC. Ironically VSCode is becoming my terminal emulator of choice for all the CLI agents - SSH/container access and the automatic port mapping, etc. - it's more convenient than tmux sessions for me. So Copilot would be ideal for me but yeah it's just tweaked for being budget/broad scope tool rather than a tool for professionals that would pay to get work done.
  - briHass 6mo ago
    Disagree entirely. GHCP at least is transparent about the pricing: hit enter on a prompt= one request. CC/Codex use some opaque quota scheme, where you never really know if a request will be 1,2,10% of your hourly max, let alone weekly max. I've never seen much difference with context ostensibly being shorter in GHCP, all of the models (in any provider) lose the thread well before their window is full, and it seems that aggressive autocompaction is a pretty standard way to help with that, and CC/Codex do it frequently.
    - rafaelmn 6mo ago
      >I've never seen much difference with context ostensibly being shorter in GHCP, all of the models (in any provider) lose the thread well before their window is full, and it seems that aggressive autocompaction is a pretty standard way to help with that, and CC/Codex do it frequently. Then we've had wildly different results. Running CC and GH copilot with Opus 4.6 on same task and the results out of CC were just better, likewise for Codex and GPT 5.4. I have to assume it's the aggressive context compaction/limited context loading because tracking what copilot does it seems to read way less context and then misses out on stuff other agents pick up automatically.
supernes 6mo ago
On the topic of Zed itself as a VSCode replacement - my experience is mixed. I loved it at first, but with time the papercuts add up. The responsiveness difference isn't that big on my system, but Zed's memory usage (with the TS language server in particular) is scandalous. As far as DX goes it's probably at 85% of the level VSCode provides, but in this space QoL features matter a lot. Oh, and it still can't render emojis in buffers on Linux...
- tuzemec 6mo ago
  I have 4-5 typescript projects and one python opened in Zed at any given time (with a bunch of LSPs, ACPs, opened terminals, etc.) and I see around 1.2 - 1.4gb usage. I opened just one of the typescript projects inside VSCode and I see something like 1gb (combining the helpers usage). I'm not using it actively, so no extra plugins and so on. That's on mac, so I guess it may vary on other systems.
- rzkyif 6mo ago
  Same here: I found the multibuffers feature really useful, but the extension system really couldn't hold a candle to VS Code at the time of my testing Spent a couple of hours trying to make the Svelte extension ignore a particular type of false positive CSS error, failed, and returned to VS Code Will definitely give it another chance when the extension system is more mature though!
- thejazzman 6mo ago
  I think there’s a bug? It used to be memory efficient and now I periodically notice it explodes. Quit and restart fixes it I don’t have any extensions installed and I’m basically leaving it open, idle, as a note scratch space. I do have projects open with many files but not many actual files are open Anyway idk
- extr 6mo ago
  I actually find Zed pretty reasonable in terms of memory usage. But yeah, like you say, there are lots of small UX/DX papercuts that are just unfortunate. In some cases I'm not sure it's even Zed's fault, it's just years and years of expecting things to work a certain way because of VS Code and they work differently in Zed. Eg: Ctrl+P "Open Fol.." in Zed does not surface "Opening a Folder". Zed doesn't call them folders. You have to know that's called "Workspace". And even then, if you type "Open Work..." it doesn't surface! You have to purposefully start with "work..."
_pdp_ 6mo ago
Our bank (a major retail bank in UK) is refusing doing business with OpenRouter and OpenRouter issued a refund which we did not request. So something is up. There is that. I might be paranoid but I feel that access to models will become more constraint in the future as the industry gets more regulated.
- chid 6mo ago
  I don't quite understand what you mean by something is up. Was the reason around security/telemetry or similar?
  - _pdp_ 6mo ago
    Bank refused to provide reasons - even after a formal complaint was raised with them. We are not the only one. I found other people online experiencing the same issue. It is hard to tell how wide-spread this is but it is strange to say the least.
- mayama 6mo ago
  OpenRouter accepts crypto for payments. That should have raised some flags with banks.
pixel_popping 6mo ago
It should be noted about Openrouter that you aren't allowed to expose the access to end users, it has to be for internal usage only, which can be fatal as they have made waves of account banning lately (without warnings).
- numlocked 6mo ago
  You are absolutely allowed to expose access to end users, as long as you continue to abide by terms of service. We have hundreds, if not thousands, of apps built on openrouter that in turn have end users of their own. We showcase many of them on our /apps ranking page!
  - himata4113 6mo ago
    I was actually wondering about this since I've seen like 3 comments talking about the same thing, would it happen to be related to money laundering due to the availability of the crypto payment method?
    - Deathmax 6mo ago
      The comments are all from the same author. OpenRouter recently started enforcing account-level regional restrictions for providers that enforce it (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) - ie blocking accounts that look like they are being used by users in China. The regional restriction used to be based on the Cloudflare edge worker IP's geolocation and enforced upstream, so a proxy/server running inside of supported regions would get around the geoblocks, but now OpenRouter are using (unspecified) signals like your billing address to geoblock. People say "banned" because the error message says "Author <provider> is banned", which really should be read as "Unable to use models from provider due to upstream ban".
      - pixel_popping 6mo ago
        Which further strengthen the fact that you can't do anything you want with API keys, even if you pay for them.
mococa 6mo ago
I also dropped Claude Code Max. I switched to OpenCode Zen + GitHub Copilot. For some reason, Claude Code burns through my quota really quickly. https://opencode.ai/zen https://opencode.ai/zen
- woutr_be 6mo ago
  How does Claude Code compare to OpenCode Zen? I’m on the $20/month Claude plan, and was considering OpenCode Zen as well. Due to the quota changes, I actually find myself using Claude less and less
  - criley2 6mo ago
    I haven't tried $20 claude code recently, but I've used OpenCode Zen primarily so I can play with opensource/chinese models which are very inexpensive. I'd spend $0.50-$1.00 on a single claude opus 4.6 plan mode run, then have a chinese model execute the plan for like $0.10-$0.15 total. I'd keep context short, constantly start new threads, and get laser focused markdown plans and knowledgebase to be token efficient. If I just let opencode zen run claude opus to plan and execute, I'd spend $20 in like 5 minutes lol
    - sourcecodeplz 6mo ago
      Which chinese models do you use and do you use any for specific tasks?
      - criley2 6mo ago
        Whenever a new one comes out, there's a good chance they're free for a week on Zen, so I try out any free ones. For example, MiniMax M2.5 and Qwen 3.6+ are free right now. Personally, I've had a lot of good results in my little personal projects with Kimi K2.5, GLM 5 and 5.1, and MiniMax M2.5.
      - msh 6mo ago
        kimi k2.5 works quite well and is super fast. Much faster than opus but not quite at the same quality level.
janandonly 6mo ago
[flagged]
- embedding-shape 6mo ago
  Also, when you janandonly pay PPQ.AI rather than OpenRouter it seems to go into your pocket instead, so understandable it makes sense it gets cheaper for you. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=PPQ.AI&sort=byPopularity&type=all https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... Rather than trying to lie and get people to use your service, be honest what the upsides/downsides are, and only add your spam when it's at least a bit related, otherwise it just comes off as insincere when you're spamming your own platform in unrelated threads.
  - janandonly 6mo ago
    I am in no way affiliated with ppq.ai.
reddec 6mo ago
My 50c - ollama cloud 20$. GLM5 and kimi are really competitive models, Ollama usage limits insane high, no limits where to use (has normal APIs), privacy and no logging
- yieldcrv 6mo ago
  yeah? why do you like that over using GLM5 in a VPS that charges by token use? $20 still cheaper and seamless to set up? how are the tokens per second?
  - reddec 6mo ago
    I have roughly 20-40M token usage per day for GLM only (more if count other models). Using API pricing from OR it means ollama more profitable for me after day (few days if count cache properly). For several models like Kimi and glm they have b300 and performance really good. At launch I got closer to 90-100 tps. Nowadays it’s around 60 tps stable across most models I used (utility models < 120B almost instant)
- my002 6mo ago
  Interesting. I've always been turned off by how vague the descriptions of Ollama's limits are for their paid tiers. What sort of work have you been doing with it?
  - reddec 6mo ago
    Background agents (diy OpenClaw like), coding, assistant (openwebui). The worst I saw - multiple parallel agents (opencode & pi-coding agents), with Kimi and glm, almost non stop development during the work day - 15-20% session consumption (I think it’s 2h bucket) max. Never hit the limit. In contrast, 20$ Claude in the similar mode I consumed after just few hours of work.
candl 6mo ago
What providers offer nowadays coding plans, so no pricing per tokens, just api call limit and a monthly fee. Which are affordable?
siliconc0w 6mo ago
I'm running out of Claude session limits in a single planning + implementation session even when using sonnet for the implementation. This isn't even super complex work - it was refactoring a data model, modifying templates/apis/services, etc. It has also gotten notably more 'lazy' like it updated the data model and not the template until I specifically pointed that out. My backup has been Opencode + Kimi K2. It's definitely not as strong as even Sonnet but it's pretty fast and is serviceable for basic web app work like the above.
extr 6mo ago
I think you are kidding if you think you are going to be remotely approximately the quantity/quality of output you get from a $100/max sub with Zed/Openrouter. I easily get $1K+ of usage out of my $100 max sub. And that's with Opus 4.6 on high thinking.
- lelanthran 6mo ago
  > I easily get $1K+ of usage out of my $100 max sub. And that's with Opus 4.6 on high thinking. And people keep claiming the token providers are running inference at a profit.
  - gruez 6mo ago
    >And people keep claiming the token providers are running inference at a profit. Not everyone gets $1K of usage, and you don't know how fat the per-token margins are. It's like saying the local buffet place is losing money because you eat $100 worth of takeout for $30.
    - kitsune1 6mo ago
      [dead]
    - lelanthran 6mo ago
      > Not everyone gets $1K of usage, and you don't know how fat the per-token margins are. Well, we're going to find out sooner rather than later. Right now you don't know how thin (or negative) the margins are, either, after all. All we know for certain is how much VC cash they got. Revenue, spend, profit, etc calculated according to GAAP are still a secret.
  - infecto 6mo ago
    Yes and when we say things like that we are not talking about plans. Running inference at a profit means api token use is run profitably. It’s a huge unknown what’s happening at the plan level, we know there is subsidy happening but in aggregate impossible to know if it’s profitable or not.
WhitneyLand 6mo ago
>>For some reason Zed limits the Gemini 3.1 context to 200k tokens It’s not just Zed, CoPilot also reduces the capabilities and options available when using models directly. No thanks, definitely agree with the Open Router approach or native harness to keep full functionality.
heliumtera 6mo ago
I heard you liked men in the middle, so we put a man in the middle of men in the middle.
bachmeier 6mo ago
I just tried Zed with Gemma 4 to see how it does with local models. Impressive speed and quality for the small model with thinking off (E4B). Very slow for the big model with thinking turned on. We'll see if this is better than my current tools (primary is Codex CLI plus qwen3 coder next) but the first impression is good. Especially nice that it configured all of my ollama models automatically.
tiku 6mo ago
Im using z.ai when I hit my Claude limit after a few questions..drops in easily in Claude code.
g8oz 6mo ago
Just on Zed: it's speed and responsiveness are very impressive. Feels as snappy as Notepad++.
BoredPositron 6mo ago
Get a Gemini subscription and pipe the antigravity tokens into claude code. You can have five family accounts on one subscription and every account gets the same amount of tokens. It's the best value there is atm and you get more claude tokens than from anthropic themselves.
- pyinstallwoes 6mo ago
  Sorry can you expand on that? I have a Gemini subscription from a Google pro account but never used it much. I can use it with Claude Code?? Hmm. I’ll look it up. Thanks!
  - phainopepla2 6mo ago
    Be aware it's against the terms of service. Google account ban is possible
- faeyanpiraat 6mo ago
  Sounds like a good way to get your google account banned
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
frenchie4111 6mo ago
Does anyone use Zed with a monorepo? I am in a situation where every sub-folder has its own language server settings, lint settings, etc. VSCode (and forks) can handle this by creating a workspace, adding each folder to the workspace, and having a separate .vscode per-folder. I haven't figured out how to do the same with Zed. I would love to stop using VSCode forks
0xbadcafebee 6mo ago
I just so happen to be doing a price comparison for different cloud LLM providers right now. It turns out some of the cheapest providers with the highest limits are ones you might not have heard of. OpenCode Go has the simplest plan at the highest rate limits for any subscription plan with multiple model families, and it's $10/month ($5/month for first month). With the cheapest model in the plan (MiniMax M2.5), it is a 13x higher rate than Claude Max, at 1/10th the price. The most expensive model (GLM 5.1) gives you a rate of 880 per 5h, which is more than any other $10 plan. I don't expect this price to last, it makes no sense. OpenCode also has a very generous free tier with higher rates than some paid plans, but the free models do collect data. The cheapest plan of all is free and unlimited - GitHub Copilot. They offer 3 models for free with (supposedly) no limit - GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, and GPT-5-mini. I would not suggest coding with them, but for really basic stuff, you can't get better than free. I would not recommend their paid plans, they actually have the lowest limits of any provider. They also have the most obtuse per-token pricing of any provider. (FYI, GitHub Copilot OAuth is officially supported in OpenCode) The next cheapest unlimited plan is BlackBox Pro. Their $10/month Pro plan provides unlimited access to MiniMax M2.5. This model is good enough for coding, and the unlimited number of requests means you can keep churning with subagents long after other providers have hit a limit. The next cheapest is MiniMax Max, a plan from the makers of MiniMax. For $50/month, you get 15,000 requests per 5-hours to MiniMax M2.7. This is not as cheap as OpenCode Go, which gives you 20,000 requests of MiniMax M2.5 for $10, but you are getting the newer model. If you don't want to use MiniMax, the next cheapest is Chutes Pro. For $20/month, you get a monthly limit of 5,000 requests. I'll be adding more of these as I find them to this spreadsheet: https://codeberg.org/mutablecc/calculate-ai-cost/src/branch/main/subscription_vs_api_comparison.csv https://codeberg.org/mutablecc/calculate-ai-cost/src/branch/... Note: This calculation is inaccurate, for multiple reasons. For one, it's entirely predicated on working 8 hours a day, 22 days a month; I'll recalculate at some point to find cheapest if you wanted to churn 24/7. For another, some providers (coughANTHROPIC) don't actually tell you what their limits are, so we have to guess and use an average. But based on my research, the calculations seems to match up with the per-request API cost reported at OpenRouter. Happy to take suggestions on improvements.
- da_ordi_ 6mo ago
  Yep, I was comparing opencode go ($10/month) with copilot pro ($10/month) this morning. opencode go gives about 14x the requests of copilot pro. I was like, there must be something not right. Then I compared the best model GLM5.1 on opencode go, and antropic opus 4.6, yes opus is better on most benchmarks, but glm 5.1 is not too far behind.
KronisLV 6mo ago
I tried using OpenRouter for the same kind of development I now do with Anthropic's subscription across Sonnet/Gemini/GPT models and it ended up being 2-3x more expensive than the subscription (which I suspect is heavily subsidized). It's nice that it works for the author, though, and OpenRouter is pretty nice for trying out models or interacting with multiple ones through a unified platform!
simlevesque 6mo ago
I really don't like OpenCode. One thing that really irritated me is that on mouse hover it selects options when you're given a set of choices.
hybirdss 6mo ago
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- rachel_rig 6mo ago
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Bmello11 6mo ago
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atlgator 6mo ago
I am very disappointed that Anthropic killed the use of Max subscriptions for OpenClaw, especially when I never hit my usage limits on it. Perhaps I will try this combo as an alternative.
Malachiidaniels 6mo ago
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gurkiu 6mo ago
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KaiShips 6mo ago
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prostheticrazor 6mo ago
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notef 6mo ago
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jusonchan81 6mo ago
$20 codex has been working great for me and I don’t think I ever hit a limit. It works great because I typically break down the tasks small enough that I can fully review and accept. I’ve always wondered what’s the business case for spending more as I personally feel I am getting so much done.
roninforge 6mo ago
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slimebot80 6mo ago
I might be misunderstanding something. He uses $70 for remaining credit and says that's a good thing because it rolls over But spending $70 on an API (he says he still prefers Opus) is far less cost effective than a Max plan on Anthropic. The article seems to be nudging us to setup OpenRouter but the premise isn't fully true. A bit of diversity is excellent, but the costs are going to (largely) prohibit it in reality?
- kisamoto 6mo ago
  OP here. I do like Opus but I don't default to it for everything. My CC usage is a lot of Haiku/Sonnet and is also very bursty (bursts throughout the month, not a day). I find that a lot of my Claude usage goes unused and then when I'm coding or leaning on agents I hit a limit and have to wait. I don't like that dynamic. I do have Extra Usage enabled (with a cap) but then I'm spending more than the $100 I already do. I'm learning that a lot of people seem to consistently stay within limits and that works for them but I was looking for something different for myself. The real pain is that Anthropic don't easily quantify usage (which can now change over the day). How many tokens is it? Minimum? Maximum? I tried to quantify this with OpenTelemetry for a while but have decided to move to this more flexible setup.
  - rachel_rig 6mo ago
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qrbcards 6mo ago
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mark212 6mo ago
Bizarre and baffling -- an entire post about AI agents for coding and not a single mention of OpenAI, Codex, or ChatGPT (any model). Not that I'm shilling for them in any way, but the consensus among Twitterati is that Codex is better and it's weird that it's not even mentioned as an option?
frr149 6mo ago
I see a lot of people trying to run away from Anthropic "window of doom" affair lately, me myself included. What has stopped me so far is the lack of real alternative to Opus. Not even gpt5.4 comes close
a7om_com 6mo ago
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cat_plus_plus 6mo ago
I just got MiniMax $200/year token plan. Usually it works fine for daily coding, if it gets stuck I pay for some Claude API calls through Roo gateway. Unlike other plans, this one officially supports running OpenClaw or other API workflows and doesn't suspend you long term if you use too many tokens, just set rate per few hours.
talkfold 6mo ago
Spent $100/month hitting limits, now spending $100/month not hitting limits. The math is the same but the frustration is gone.
Futurmix 5mo ago
[flagged]

349 points by kisamoto 6mo ago

hhthrowaway1230 6mo ago

note: doesn't openrouter charge 5.5% fee?

kisamoto 6mo ago
You are absolutely correct, I was not aware of this. I will update the article accordingly and perhaps it's more worthwhile to stay solely on Cursor with the limited models. Sadly Zed seems to add 10% so it's still more worthwhile to use OpenRouter.
- Kelteseth 6mo ago
  Come on at least write the Hackernews replies yourself.
  - kisamoto 6mo ago
    I did. Perhaps too much consumption of AI responses but articles and engagement are written by me - a human.
    - cbg0 6mo ago
      That's exactly what a clanker would say. ^/s
  - glitchcrab 6mo ago
    Only the opening sentence has an AI smell; the rest is definitely written by a fleshy meatbag
- cedws 6mo ago
  I feel like a bit of an idiot because I didn’t know this either. I just assumed OR was another startup burning money to provide models at cost. OpenRouter is a valuable service but I’ll probably try to run my own router going forward.
- giancarlostoro 6mo ago
  Look again, they don't charge that fee until after "1M requests per month" whatever that means? Oh that's if you bring your own provider keys. https://openrouter.ai/docs/guides/overview/auth/byok https://openrouter.ai/docs/guides/overview/auth/byok

Computer0 6mo ago

When I use the tool ccusage it says I use $600 of usage a month for my $100. I don’t know that this is a good value proposition for me if I want to stay with the same model, half the reason I use Claude code, personally.

blitzar 6mo ago
> Reallocating $100/Month Claude Code Spend The new gimped claude code limits means my claude code spend the last month is $131. It cost me $20. I did an additional spend $5 on extra usage which cost me $5. While VC's are setting fire to money I am going to warm my hands.
- 542458 6mo ago
  I think it is worth noting that “what they charge for api access” != “marginal cost of inference”. So I don’t think getting i.e. $40 of api usage for $20 would be insane. $131 for $20 does probably mean somebody is losing money though.
- andai 6mo ago
  You mean you were getting more than $130 per $20 before? 85% discount is actually a bit lower than I remember. I think it used to be closer to 90-95%. They're getting stingy ;)
  - blitzar 6mo ago
    I think it was around $400-$500 last year ($20 a day was fairly common) before they added the 7 day limits (and have since slashed the 4 hour limits). No parallel running; I would very consistently get tokens for over 3 hours then take a walk around the block and come back and be ready to go again.
vanillameow 6mo ago
I ran this just now and for a small web-app I built I used over $50 in a single day. This was using superpowers plugin and almost exclusively coordinating through Opus. Could I get by with 100$ a month without the subscription? Maybe, but I pay for the convenience of just being able to throw Opus with lavish plugins at it (with 5h limits that are, in my opinion, pretty reasonable). I don't really WANT to have to think about when Haiku or Sonnet are enough. If anything I would consider switching to OpenAI subscription (if I didn't despise them even more than Anthropic as a company), but converting to API use seems completely infeasible to me. I'd have to severely cut back on my use for not much benefit, other than having maybe an agent thats a little less jank than CC.

Computer0 6mo ago

I have had credits on open router that haven’t been deleted since near the projects launch, I believe 365 days is not a rule but rather a right reserved.

numlocked 6mo ago
COO of OpenRouter here. Thats right — we haven’t done it to date but we can’t have unlimited liabilities stacking up forever. At some point we will start expiring credits from accounts that have seen zero activity in over a year.
- kisamoto 6mo ago
  Thank you for taking the time to explain that - makes sense. I lifted what was present in your terms of service as I'd like to understand the minimum time I have.
- threatofrain 6mo ago
  In CA gift cards don’t expire and the industry does fine without having people buy expiring money.
- blitzar 6mo ago
  Maybe a bad suggestion, but can you do an inactivity "fee" - 25% / year (min $5) or something similar. I like the pre-pay system everyone in Ai seems to have settled on, its better than the AWS bills that we all know and love.
- indigodaddy 6mo ago
  What if I deposited $10, and have lots of recent activity on free models and have barely touched the $10 for payg models?
- ac29 6mo ago
  > we can’t have unlimited liabilities stacking up forever The liabilities are completely offset by prepayments from your customers though. Even better, you can earn interest on the deposits without paying any out. If you just dont want the liabilities on the books, issue refunds. Expiring credits feels like a cash grab.

Serberus 6mo ago

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philipp-gayret 6mo ago

I like and do use Zed but be aware functionality like Hooks is not supported for their integration with Claude Code, as a heavy user of Hooks I would stick with the terminal.

kisamoto 6mo ago
I'm always interested in how people use tools. I like to have a full editor to review code as a complement to the CLI and as I don't often use hooks the integration is also good enough for me. 1. What do you use the hooks for? 2. Do you use an editor alongside the CLI to review code or only examine the diffs?
- philipp-gayret 6mo ago
  > 1. What do you use the hooks for? I use hooks to automate decisionmaking (i.e. stronger permissions than a regex by parsing the bash) and similarly automate guidance. Our tooling is open source so here is an example: https://github.com/Devleaps/agent-policies-server/blob/master/policies/universal/gh.rego https://github.com/Devleaps/agent-policies-server/blob/maste... Another example is I whitelist dependencies based on the dependency age, for example a library needs to have been around for a year, then it can do `uv add {dependency}`. As a third example, hooks tell Claude not to write out *_test|debug.py at the root of a project, which for some reason it very often does when it wants to fix some issue. The hooks tell it to write a proper test case using the test framework in place. So instead of having random debug and test scripts everywhere after a long session, I have more test coverage. This is all in the agent-policies-server project linked above. Mainly it reduces interruptions and I don't have to worry about it doing something particularly stupid. (It is not a replacement for sandboxing) > Do you use an editor alongside the CLI to review code or only examine the diffs? I do have the file tree open alongside the CLI, and that is both in Zed. How much of the code I review depends on who owns the code, meaning a client, employer or me. In most cases I review it myself, as for many clients code goes through a peer review process. In some cases the organization uses automated quality metrics and has agents looking at code instead. If agents don't have any more comments, and the quality metrics also approve, it's good enough for them. As for my own personal projects, I look at the code when I feel like it, which is practically never.

bashtoni 6mo ago

After hitting Claude limits today I spent the afternoon using OpenCode + GLM 5.1 via OpenRouter and I was very impressed. OpenCode picked up my CLAUDE.md files and skills straight away, and I got similar performance to Opus 4.6.

sourcecodeplz 6mo ago
How much did it cost for how long?
- BeetleB 6mo ago
  https://z.ai/subscribe https://z.ai/subscribe Many of us got the annual Lite plan when they had the $28 discount. But even at $120 I think it's a good deal.
  - jml78 6mo ago
    I am trying to take this in the more giving way possible, anyone remotely considering that subscription should go on reddit and see all the people experiencing outages constantly and insanely slow speeds when it does work. I have been wanting to subscribe but based on how awful the experience is for most people, I just can’t pull the trigger
    - BeetleB 6mo ago
      At $84, I can understand not taking the risk. But for $28 ... it was worth it. FWIW, I've never dealt with outages since I signed up over 3 months ago (Lite plan). It is slow - always has been. I can live with that. At the same time, I'm not using it for work. It's for the occasional project once in a while. So maybe I just haven't hit any limits? I did use it for OpenClaw for 2-3 weeks. Never had connection issues. Looking at https://docs.z.ai/devpack/faq https://docs.z.ai/devpack/faq you can see the details of their limits. Seems GLM 5.1 has low thresholds, and will get lower starting May. On Reddit I see some people switching to GLM 5 and claiming they haven't hit limits - the site doesn't indicate the limits for that model. They also say that those who subscribed before February have different limits - unsure if it's lower or higher! GLM-4.7 is still a fairly capable model. Not as good as Opus, but for most personal projects it's been adequate. I see on Reddit plenty of people plan using GLM-5.1, and use 4.7 for implementation.

wiether 6mo ago

People may feel differently about the fee that OpenRouter takes, but I think the service they provide is worth the extra cost. Having access to dozens of models through a single API key, tracking cost of each request, being able to run the same request on different models and comparing their results next to each other, separating usages through different API keys, adding your own presets, setting your routing rules... And once you start using an account with multiple users, it's even more useful to have all those features! Not relying on a subscription and having the right to do exactly what you want with your API key (using it with any tool/harness...) is also a big plus to me.

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
pixel_popping 6mo ago
Expect you don't have the right to do what you want with the API Key (see waves of ban lately, many SaaS services have closed because of it).
- embedding-shape 6mo ago
  Unless you provide some more details, at least outline what "do what you want" was in your case, this seems like just straight up FUD.
  - himata4113 6mo ago
    openrouter accepts crypto so might have been some money laundering involved for reselling dirty crypto for llm api. if that wasn't the reason, hey that's actually a great way to launder money (not financial advice).
    - embedding-shape 6mo ago
      So you pay OpenRouter with cryptocurrencies, which they accept as a payment method, and then what, they block your account because the cryptocurrencies you paid with came from some account on the blockchain associated with other stuff? Or what are you really saying here? I don't understand how that's related to "you don't have the right to do what you want with the API Key", which is the FUD part.

ElFitz 6mo ago

Has anyone (other than OpenClaw) used pi? (https://shittycodingagent.ai/ https://shittycodingagent.ai/, https://pi.dev/ https://pi.dev/) Any insights / suggestions / best practices?

simgt 6mo ago
Yes, it's super cool. Check Mario's latest talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dli5slNaJu0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dli5slNaJu0 Armin also has some videos covering it on his channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ArminRonacher/ https://www.youtube.com/@ArminRonacher/ Pi's Discord is still nice, even though it was a bit flooded after the openclaw thing.
nocobot 6mo ago
i really have been enjoying pi a lot at first i thought i was goring to build lots of extra plugins and commands but what ended up working for me is: - i have a simpel command that pulls context from a linear issue - simple review command - project specific skills for common tasks
Daviey 6mo ago
Reluctantly, the dev seems to have a stinky attitude. He went on an "OSS vacation", which is perfectly reasonable and said he'd be back on a certain date. I had a PR open for a trivial fix, someone asked when it would land. I shared he was still away. After his return I politely asked, "@badlogic hey, what can we do to progress this? Thanks x" I then got what I would consider an abusive reply, because he confused me with someone else. In the meantime he extended his vacation. Didn't even think his shitty attitude was worthy of an apology, that HE confused me with someone else. https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/discussions/1475#discussioncomment-15827978 https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/discussions/1475#discuss... And another other thing I fixed with no attribution, just landed it himself separately. https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/discussions/1080 https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/discussions/1080 and https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/issues/1079#event-22389646699 https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/issues/1079#event-223896... Now he's seemingly marked anything with my name on as a "clanker", despite all my changes being by hand. I've been around open source enough to have a thick skin, but when i'm doing something "for fun" and someone treats you like that, i'd rather avoid it as far as possible. I certainly could not in good faith use this project for anything work related.

i_love_retros 6mo ago

I can't believe people are spending $100 a month on this! You're all mad!

gozzoo 6mo ago
some are spending 100/day or even 1000/day. they must really be mad :)
- i_love_retros 6mo ago
  Drunk on perceived power
  - nubg 6mo ago
    Your ignorance is our opportunity :)
kisamoto 6mo ago
I had a similar opinion a couple of years ago, content with more of an autocomplete. Now I'm happy with agents as the models and harnesses have improved significantly but the token usage comes at a cost.
grebc 6mo ago
When you consider the cross section of the tech community posting on HN, is it really that surprising? It’s mad for sure, but I’d bet 99.9% of people spending money on AI aren’t spending their own hard earned sooo… “YOLO it’s a business expense/investment”…
dboreham 6mo ago
To get the equivalent of a junior developer that would cost $80,000/yr + benefits?
andrewmcwatters 6mo ago
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6mo ago

urnfjrkrkn 6mo ago

I would suggest to explore paid plans on different providers. Much better value than plans bundled with editors or API based usage in openrouter. And Chinese companies have versions hosted in Singapore or US. Also ditching Claude Code is mistake. It is quite capable model, and still great value. I would keep it, even if it's just for code reviews and planning. Anthropic allows pro plans use in Zed.

cbg0 6mo ago

I don't think there's currently better value than Github's $40 plan which gives you access to GPT5 & Claude variants. It's pay per request so not ideal for back-and-forth but great for building complex features on the cheap compared to paying per token. Because GH is accessing the API behind the scenes, you should face less degradation when using Sonnet/Opus models compared to a Claude subscription. Keep a ChatGPT $20 subscription alongside for back-and-forth conversations and you'll get great bang for buck.

rafaelmn 6mo ago
I'm still paying the 10$ GH copilot but I don't use it because : - context is aggressively trimmed compared to CC obviously for cost saving reasons, so the performance is worse - the request pricing model forces me to adjust how I work Just these alone are not worth saving the 60$/month for me. I like the VSCode integration and the MCP/LSP usage surprised me sometimes over the dumb grep from CC. Ironically VSCode is becoming my terminal emulator of choice for all the CLI agents - SSH/container access and the automatic port mapping, etc. - it's more convenient than tmux sessions for me. So Copilot would be ideal for me but yeah it's just tweaked for being budget/broad scope tool rather than a tool for professionals that would pay to get work done.
- briHass 6mo ago
  Disagree entirely. GHCP at least is transparent about the pricing: hit enter on a prompt= one request. CC/Codex use some opaque quota scheme, where you never really know if a request will be 1,2,10% of your hourly max, let alone weekly max. I've never seen much difference with context ostensibly being shorter in GHCP, all of the models (in any provider) lose the thread well before their window is full, and it seems that aggressive autocompaction is a pretty standard way to help with that, and CC/Codex do it frequently.
  - rafaelmn 6mo ago
    >I've never seen much difference with context ostensibly being shorter in GHCP, all of the models (in any provider) lose the thread well before their window is full, and it seems that aggressive autocompaction is a pretty standard way to help with that, and CC/Codex do it frequently. Then we've had wildly different results. Running CC and GH copilot with Opus 4.6 on same task and the results out of CC were just better, likewise for Codex and GPT 5.4. I have to assume it's the aggressive context compaction/limited context loading because tracking what copilot does it seems to read way less context and then misses out on stuff other agents pick up automatically.

supernes 6mo ago

On the topic of Zed itself as a VSCode replacement - my experience is mixed. I loved it at first, but with time the papercuts add up. The responsiveness difference isn't that big on my system, but Zed's memory usage (with the TS language server in particular) is scandalous. As far as DX goes it's probably at 85% of the level VSCode provides, but in this space QoL features matter a lot. Oh, and it still can't render emojis in buffers on Linux...

tuzemec 6mo ago
I have 4-5 typescript projects and one python opened in Zed at any given time (with a bunch of LSPs, ACPs, opened terminals, etc.) and I see around 1.2 - 1.4gb usage. I opened just one of the typescript projects inside VSCode and I see something like 1gb (combining the helpers usage). I'm not using it actively, so no extra plugins and so on. That's on mac, so I guess it may vary on other systems.
rzkyif 6mo ago
Same here: I found the multibuffers feature really useful, but the extension system really couldn't hold a candle to VS Code at the time of my testing Spent a couple of hours trying to make the Svelte extension ignore a particular type of false positive CSS error, failed, and returned to VS Code Will definitely give it another chance when the extension system is more mature though!
thejazzman 6mo ago
I think there’s a bug? It used to be memory efficient and now I periodically notice it explodes. Quit and restart fixes it I don’t have any extensions installed and I’m basically leaving it open, idle, as a note scratch space. I do have projects open with many files but not many actual files are open Anyway idk
extr 6mo ago
I actually find Zed pretty reasonable in terms of memory usage. But yeah, like you say, there are lots of small UX/DX papercuts that are just unfortunate. In some cases I'm not sure it's even Zed's fault, it's just years and years of expecting things to work a certain way because of VS Code and they work differently in Zed. Eg: Ctrl+P "Open Fol.." in Zed does not surface "Opening a Folder". Zed doesn't call them folders. You have to know that's called "Workspace". And even then, if you type "Open Work..." it doesn't surface! You have to purposefully start with "work..."

_pdp_ 6mo ago

Our bank (a major retail bank in UK) is refusing doing business with OpenRouter and OpenRouter issued a refund which we did not request. So something is up. There is that. I might be paranoid but I feel that access to models will become more constraint in the future as the industry gets more regulated.

chid 6mo ago
I don't quite understand what you mean by something is up. Was the reason around security/telemetry or similar?
- _pdp_ 6mo ago
  Bank refused to provide reasons - even after a formal complaint was raised with them. We are not the only one. I found other people online experiencing the same issue. It is hard to tell how wide-spread this is but it is strange to say the least.
mayama 6mo ago
OpenRouter accepts crypto for payments. That should have raised some flags with banks.

pixel_popping 6mo ago

It should be noted about Openrouter that you aren't allowed to expose the access to end users, it has to be for internal usage only, which can be fatal as they have made waves of account banning lately (without warnings).

numlocked 6mo ago
You are absolutely allowed to expose access to end users, as long as you continue to abide by terms of service. We have hundreds, if not thousands, of apps built on openrouter that in turn have end users of their own. We showcase many of them on our /apps ranking page!
- himata4113 6mo ago
  I was actually wondering about this since I've seen like 3 comments talking about the same thing, would it happen to be related to money laundering due to the availability of the crypto payment method?
  - Deathmax 6mo ago
    The comments are all from the same author. OpenRouter recently started enforcing account-level regional restrictions for providers that enforce it (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) - ie blocking accounts that look like they are being used by users in China. The regional restriction used to be based on the Cloudflare edge worker IP's geolocation and enforced upstream, so a proxy/server running inside of supported regions would get around the geoblocks, but now OpenRouter are using (unspecified) signals like your billing address to geoblock. People say "banned" because the error message says "Author <provider> is banned", which really should be read as "Unable to use models from provider due to upstream ban".
    - pixel_popping 6mo ago
      Which further strengthen the fact that you can't do anything you want with API keys, even if you pay for them.

mococa 6mo ago

I also dropped Claude Code Max. I switched to OpenCode Zen + GitHub Copilot. For some reason, Claude Code burns through my quota really quickly. https://opencode.ai/zen https://opencode.ai/zen

woutr_be 6mo ago
How does Claude Code compare to OpenCode Zen? I’m on the $20/month Claude plan, and was considering OpenCode Zen as well. Due to the quota changes, I actually find myself using Claude less and less
- criley2 6mo ago
  I haven't tried $20 claude code recently, but I've used OpenCode Zen primarily so I can play with opensource/chinese models which are very inexpensive. I'd spend $0.50-$1.00 on a single claude opus 4.6 plan mode run, then have a chinese model execute the plan for like $0.10-$0.15 total. I'd keep context short, constantly start new threads, and get laser focused markdown plans and knowledgebase to be token efficient. If I just let opencode zen run claude opus to plan and execute, I'd spend $20 in like 5 minutes lol
  - sourcecodeplz 6mo ago
    Which chinese models do you use and do you use any for specific tasks?
    - criley2 6mo ago
      Whenever a new one comes out, there's a good chance they're free for a week on Zen, so I try out any free ones. For example, MiniMax M2.5 and Qwen 3.6+ are free right now. Personally, I've had a lot of good results in my little personal projects with Kimi K2.5, GLM 5 and 5.1, and MiniMax M2.5.
    - msh 6mo ago
      kimi k2.5 works quite well and is super fast. Much faster than opus but not quite at the same quality level.

janandonly 6mo ago

[flagged]

embedding-shape 6mo ago
Also, when you janandonly pay PPQ.AI rather than OpenRouter it seems to go into your pocket instead, so understandable it makes sense it gets cheaper for you. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=PPQ.AI&sort=byPopularity&type=all https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... Rather than trying to lie and get people to use your service, be honest what the upsides/downsides are, and only add your spam when it's at least a bit related, otherwise it just comes off as insincere when you're spamming your own platform in unrelated threads.
- janandonly 6mo ago
  I am in no way affiliated with ppq.ai.

reddec 6mo ago

My 50c - ollama cloud 20$. GLM5 and kimi are really competitive models, Ollama usage limits insane high, no limits where to use (has normal APIs), privacy and no logging

yieldcrv 6mo ago
yeah? why do you like that over using GLM5 in a VPS that charges by token use? $20 still cheaper and seamless to set up? how are the tokens per second?
- reddec 6mo ago
  I have roughly 20-40M token usage per day for GLM only (more if count other models). Using API pricing from OR it means ollama more profitable for me after day (few days if count cache properly). For several models like Kimi and glm they have b300 and performance really good. At launch I got closer to 90-100 tps. Nowadays it’s around 60 tps stable across most models I used (utility models < 120B almost instant)
my002 6mo ago
Interesting. I've always been turned off by how vague the descriptions of Ollama's limits are for their paid tiers. What sort of work have you been doing with it?
- reddec 6mo ago
  Background agents (diy OpenClaw like), coding, assistant (openwebui). The worst I saw - multiple parallel agents (opencode & pi-coding agents), with Kimi and glm, almost non stop development during the work day - 15-20% session consumption (I think it’s 2h bucket) max. Never hit the limit. In contrast, 20$ Claude in the similar mode I consumed after just few hours of work.

candl 6mo ago

What providers offer nowadays coding plans, so no pricing per tokens, just api call limit and a monthly fee. Which are affordable?

siliconc0w 6mo ago

I'm running out of Claude session limits in a single planning + implementation session even when using sonnet for the implementation. This isn't even super complex work - it was refactoring a data model, modifying templates/apis/services, etc. It has also gotten notably more 'lazy' like it updated the data model and not the template until I specifically pointed that out. My backup has been Opencode + Kimi K2. It's definitely not as strong as even Sonnet but it's pretty fast and is serviceable for basic web app work like the above.

extr 6mo ago

I think you are kidding if you think you are going to be remotely approximately the quantity/quality of output you get from a $100/max sub with Zed/Openrouter. I easily get $1K+ of usage out of my $100 max sub. And that's with Opus 4.6 on high thinking.

lelanthran 6mo ago
> I easily get $1K+ of usage out of my $100 max sub. And that's with Opus 4.6 on high thinking. And people keep claiming the token providers are running inference at a profit.
- gruez 6mo ago
  >And people keep claiming the token providers are running inference at a profit. Not everyone gets $1K of usage, and you don't know how fat the per-token margins are. It's like saying the local buffet place is losing money because you eat $100 worth of takeout for $30.
  - kitsune1 6mo ago
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  - lelanthran 6mo ago
    > Not everyone gets $1K of usage, and you don't know how fat the per-token margins are. Well, we're going to find out sooner rather than later. Right now you don't know how thin (or negative) the margins are, either, after all. All we know for certain is how much VC cash they got. Revenue, spend, profit, etc calculated according to GAAP are still a secret.
- infecto 6mo ago
  Yes and when we say things like that we are not talking about plans. Running inference at a profit means api token use is run profitably. It’s a huge unknown what’s happening at the plan level, we know there is subsidy happening but in aggregate impossible to know if it’s profitable or not.

WhitneyLand 6mo ago

>>For some reason Zed limits the Gemini 3.1 context to 200k tokens It’s not just Zed, CoPilot also reduces the capabilities and options available when using models directly. No thanks, definitely agree with the Open Router approach or native harness to keep full functionality.

heliumtera 6mo ago

I heard you liked men in the middle, so we put a man in the middle of men in the middle.

bachmeier 6mo ago

I just tried Zed with Gemma 4 to see how it does with local models. Impressive speed and quality for the small model with thinking off (E4B). Very slow for the big model with thinking turned on. We'll see if this is better than my current tools (primary is Codex CLI plus qwen3 coder next) but the first impression is good. Especially nice that it configured all of my ollama models automatically.

tiku 6mo ago

Im using z.ai when I hit my Claude limit after a few questions..drops in easily in Claude code.

g8oz 6mo ago

Just on Zed: it's speed and responsiveness are very impressive. Feels as snappy as Notepad++.

BoredPositron 6mo ago

Get a Gemini subscription and pipe the antigravity tokens into claude code. You can have five family accounts on one subscription and every account gets the same amount of tokens. It's the best value there is atm and you get more claude tokens than from anthropic themselves.

pyinstallwoes 6mo ago
Sorry can you expand on that? I have a Gemini subscription from a Google pro account but never used it much. I can use it with Claude Code?? Hmm. I’ll look it up. Thanks!
- phainopepla2 6mo ago
  Be aware it's against the terms of service. Google account ban is possible
faeyanpiraat 6mo ago
Sounds like a good way to get your google account banned

deleted 6mo ago

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frenchie4111 6mo ago

Does anyone use Zed with a monorepo? I am in a situation where every sub-folder has its own language server settings, lint settings, etc. VSCode (and forks) can handle this by creating a workspace, adding each folder to the workspace, and having a separate .vscode per-folder. I haven't figured out how to do the same with Zed. I would love to stop using VSCode forks

0xbadcafebee 6mo ago

I just so happen to be doing a price comparison for different cloud LLM providers right now. It turns out some of the cheapest providers with the highest limits are ones you might not have heard of. OpenCode Go has the simplest plan at the highest rate limits for any subscription plan with multiple model families, and it's $10/month ($5/month for first month). With the cheapest model in the plan (MiniMax M2.5), it is a 13x higher rate than Claude Max, at 1/10th the price. The most expensive model (GLM 5.1) gives you a rate of 880 per 5h, which is more than any other $10 plan. I don't expect this price to last, it makes no sense. OpenCode also has a very generous free tier with higher rates than some paid plans, but the free models do collect data. The cheapest plan of all is free and unlimited - GitHub Copilot. They offer 3 models for free with (supposedly) no limit - GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, and GPT-5-mini. I would not suggest coding with them, but for really basic stuff, you can't get better than free. I would not recommend their paid plans, they actually have the lowest limits of any provider. They also have the most obtuse per-token pricing of any provider. (FYI, GitHub Copilot OAuth is officially supported in OpenCode) The next cheapest unlimited plan is BlackBox Pro. Their $10/month Pro plan provides unlimited access to MiniMax M2.5. This model is good enough for coding, and the unlimited number of requests means you can keep churning with subagents long after other providers have hit a limit. The next cheapest is MiniMax Max, a plan from the makers of MiniMax. For $50/month, you get 15,000 requests per 5-hours to MiniMax M2.7. This is not as cheap as OpenCode Go, which gives you 20,000 requests of MiniMax M2.5 for $10, but you are getting the newer model. If you don't want to use MiniMax, the next cheapest is Chutes Pro. For $20/month, you get a monthly limit of 5,000 requests. I'll be adding more of these as I find them to this spreadsheet: https://codeberg.org/mutablecc/calculate-ai-cost/src/branch/main/subscription_vs_api_comparison.csv https://codeberg.org/mutablecc/calculate-ai-cost/src/branch/... Note: This calculation is inaccurate, for multiple reasons. For one, it's entirely predicated on working 8 hours a day, 22 days a month; I'll recalculate at some point to find cheapest if you wanted to churn 24/7. For another, some providers (coughANTHROPIC) don't actually tell you what their limits are, so we have to guess and use an average. But based on my research, the calculations seems to match up with the per-request API cost reported at OpenRouter. Happy to take suggestions on improvements.

da_ordi_ 6mo ago
Yep, I was comparing opencode go ($10/month) with copilot pro ($10/month) this morning. opencode go gives about 14x the requests of copilot pro. I was like, there must be something not right. Then I compared the best model GLM5.1 on opencode go, and antropic opus 4.6, yes opus is better on most benchmarks, but glm 5.1 is not too far behind.

KronisLV 6mo ago

I tried using OpenRouter for the same kind of development I now do with Anthropic's subscription across Sonnet/Gemini/GPT models and it ended up being 2-3x more expensive than the subscription (which I suspect is heavily subsidized). It's nice that it works for the author, though, and OpenRouter is pretty nice for trying out models or interacting with multiple ones through a unified platform!

simlevesque 6mo ago

I really don't like OpenCode. One thing that really irritated me is that on mouse hover it selects options when you're given a set of choices.

hybirdss 6mo ago

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rachel_rig 6mo ago
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Bmello11 6mo ago

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atlgator 6mo ago

I am very disappointed that Anthropic killed the use of Max subscriptions for OpenClaw, especially when I never hit my usage limits on it. Perhaps I will try this combo as an alternative.

Malachiidaniels 6mo ago

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gurkiu 6mo ago

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KaiShips 6mo ago

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prostheticrazor 6mo ago

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notef 6mo ago

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jusonchan81 6mo ago

$20 codex has been working great for me and I don’t think I ever hit a limit. It works great because I typically break down the tasks small enough that I can fully review and accept. I’ve always wondered what’s the business case for spending more as I personally feel I am getting so much done.

roninforge 6mo ago

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slimebot80 6mo ago

I might be misunderstanding something. He uses $70 for remaining credit and says that's a good thing because it rolls over But spending $70 on an API (he says he still prefers Opus) is far less cost effective than a Max plan on Anthropic. The article seems to be nudging us to setup OpenRouter but the premise isn't fully true. A bit of diversity is excellent, but the costs are going to (largely) prohibit it in reality?

kisamoto 6mo ago
OP here. I do like Opus but I don't default to it for everything. My CC usage is a lot of Haiku/Sonnet and is also very bursty (bursts throughout the month, not a day). I find that a lot of my Claude usage goes unused and then when I'm coding or leaning on agents I hit a limit and have to wait. I don't like that dynamic. I do have Extra Usage enabled (with a cap) but then I'm spending more than the $100 I already do. I'm learning that a lot of people seem to consistently stay within limits and that works for them but I was looking for something different for myself. The real pain is that Anthropic don't easily quantify usage (which can now change over the day). How many tokens is it? Minimum? Maximum? I tried to quantify this with OpenTelemetry for a while but have decided to move to this more flexible setup.
- rachel_rig 6mo ago
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qrbcards 6mo ago

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mark212 6mo ago

Bizarre and baffling -- an entire post about AI agents for coding and not a single mention of OpenAI, Codex, or ChatGPT (any model). Not that I'm shilling for them in any way, but the consensus among Twitterati is that Codex is better and it's weird that it's not even mentioned as an option?

frr149 6mo ago

I see a lot of people trying to run away from Anthropic "window of doom" affair lately, me myself included. What has stopped me so far is the lack of real alternative to Opus. Not even gpt5.4 comes close

a7om_com 6mo ago

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cat_plus_plus 6mo ago

I just got MiniMax $200/year token plan. Usually it works fine for daily coding, if it gets stuck I pay for some Claude API calls through Roo gateway. Unlike other plans, this one officially supports running OpenClaw or other API workflows and doesn't suspend you long term if you use too many tokens, just set rate per few hours.

talkfold 6mo ago

Spent $100/month hitting limits, now spending $100/month not hitting limits. The math is the same but the frustration is gone.

Futurmix 5mo ago

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