Comment by kelnos

> It's really not cheaper than frontier subscriptions.

It depends on how you use it. I used to have the $100/mo Claude plan. I would easily blow through limits when I was on the $20/mo plan, but would rarely hit them when on the $100/mo plan.

Lately I've been using GLM 5.3 Flash (from Fireworks), and my spend is $1-$2 per day when I use it for coding, so max $60/mo (less, since I don't use it every day). IIRC DeepSeek 4.1 Flash is priced similarly.

If I had to pay API rates for frontier models, I can't see how $2/day would cut it. Maybe GLM/DS are chattier, but not anywhere near the 10x required to make the price difference not matter.

Sure, if you're running agentic loops all day, 5 days a week, you're probably going to blow past even $200/mo in API charges pretty quickly.