Comment by mlinsey
3 hours ago
I'm paying for the heavily-discounted subscriptions, not the API rates. There isn't really a cost gap for me. DeepSeek doesn't have a subscription to compare to, but when I compared the GLM 5.3 usage I got from a $100/mo Z.ai subscription compared to Opus 5.5 on a $100/mo Claude subscription, there wasn't a big gap. And GLM 5.3 is very clearly not a frontier model (deepseek v4 seemed a lot closer, but I didn't use it enough to really say for my workloads).
I don't think those subscriptions nave negative contribution margins, either. I think we're seeing a lot of price discrimination by the big labs, and huge margins on their frontier models. The fact that they have been cutting prices to their second-biggest tier of models (Opus/Sol).
Open models catching up and collapsing these margins would worry me if I were a shareholder in the big labs, but as a user, I really doubt that the western labs have bigger environmental impact just because they have higher API costs, I think they have a ton of efficiencies they aren't sharing with customers yet because demand is so high.
The tightening of subscription value has already begun. dsv4.1f is already worth paying for at market API prices. Maybe it goes to 2x because apparently no one has figured out how to match DeepSeek's insane caching efficiency, but I don't see it getting much worse than that.
Plus you can also get dsv4.1f subsidized. OpenCode Go gives 4x if I understand their pricing correctly. Anecdotally, I feel like I get way more out of my $10/mo OpenCode Go sub for the price than my $20/mo ChatGPT, even using gpt-6.1-sol high which is very cheap, and I have yet to convince myself dsv4.1f is a worse model.
It's really not cheaper than frontier subscriptions. It's getting closer, and it's a great model, but it is not more value per task than the frontier subscriptions. Don't be swayed by the token costs, it's very chatty, like 3x more tokens for the same task as sol. I used dsf 4.1 full time for about a week.
It blows frontier API pricing out of the water, but again, look at cost per task, not token usage. Still easily wins though for my work.
I do think it's the most viable alternative I've seen so far, and that applies pressure to the frontier models. Should subscription prices hike or become unavailable for some reason, I know what I'll be using.
When pricing this, it's important to consider whether or not you want to opt out of data training. You won't get the advertised rate. Also the dsf 4.1 subscription providers are throttled af... and of course they are, because otherwise they'd be haemorrhaging money.
I am looking at cost per task (and speed per task), both benchmarks and anecdotal experience.
What are you talking about?
DS4.1 Flash not really cheaper than frontier models???
It is insanely cheaper.