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.

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...

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.

Has anyone (other than OpenClaw) used pi? (https://shittycodingagent.ai/, https://pi.dev/)

Any insights / suggestions / best practices?

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!

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.

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

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

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.

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.

The bursty usage pattern is what kills the subscription value. I hit limits during mid-refactor and there's nothing to do but wait. The worst part is knowing the unused hours during the day are just gone.

OpenRouter credit rollover is the real insight — credits that don't expire vs time windows that reset whether you used them or not. I'm surprised Anthropic hasn't offered a token pack option alongside the subscription.

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

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.

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.

>>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.

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.

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

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

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).

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.

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.

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.

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

note: doesn't openrouter charge 5.5% fee?

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.

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

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.

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.

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/...

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.

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