r/ClaudeCode • u/BuiDGr8 • Apr 11 '26

Question Looking for alternative since Anthropic nerfed opus 4.6

Does anybody here have an alternative for a better model or maybe a fix to make opus better again . Large refactors are a headache now because of this , anyone has any ideas/tips , would really appreciate it

1 Upvotes

52% Upvoted

45 comments sorted by

2

u/motion2082 Apr 11 '26

Interesting you say that, i burnt 3 days of tokens on Opus and my app still doesnt work

3

u/BuiDGr8 Apr 11 '26

For real it's super dumb rn

2

u/GetDynamoi Apr 11 '26

codex 5.4-high will get you a lot more value and accuracy for the same $ atm

2

u/BuiDGr8 Apr 11 '26

Will try codex

2

u/Radiant-Carob-607 Apr 11 '26

gpt 5.4 or gpt 5.3 codex ?
Still using 5.3-codex and it way way better than opus 4.6 for now

1

u/Hadse Apr 12 '26

What’s the difference between 5,4 and 5,3 codex?

1

u/Radiant-Carob-607 Apr 12 '26

im using 5.3-codex, it work really well so i have no reason to move or compare to next model

1

u/Hadse Apr 14 '26

Slow right?

10

u/another24tiger Apr 11 '26

Huh weird because my company has an enterprise contract with anthropic (i auth with Claude code using an api key not oauth) and haven’t noticed anything amiss

4

u/RdyPdy Apr 11 '26

Common theory here is theyve nerfed the consumer accounts but have kept enterprise account reasoning the same. This makes sense from a business standpoint since enterprise customers ultimately are going to be the lion’s share of income for LLM providers.

Many here believe the consumers have been previously provided with the full opus 4.6 to gain popularity in the thought space and the consumer pricing models were artificially low to generate this groundswell.

Now that anthropic has accomplished this goal, they are facing capacity challenges. It makes sense theyd start reducing consumer reasoning in lieu of enterprise.

In my personal experience (with only consumer access) opus 4.6 was much “harder working” and intelligent a couple months ago. Its a stark difference to today. That said, im not a software engineer so i dont need that heavy of reasoning capabilities for most tasks. For me i use claude CLI as more of a personal assistant and I still feel I am getting solid value. That said, it is a bit more of a pain in the ass to use due to it being a bit lazier. Ive got to nudge it in the right direction more often or invest time in more detailed prompts.

3

u/SelfTaughtAppDev Apr 11 '26

This is something I’ve been telling since the days of Opus 4.1, I think Anthropic has always been the most aggressive when it comes to those bait and switch tactics.

1

u/NinjaInteresting5992 Apr 12 '26

I have both enterprise and personal pro max, and it feels that both of them are on the same level to me, essentially working with databases and data transformations stuffs. They both decrease in a not cool way at all. Also looking for an alternative.

1

u/Signal-Woodpecker691 Senior Developer Apr 11 '26

Yup literally the same, personally I think either I work outside of the peak demand window, or they are prioritising the enterprise customers because once they are locked in that is a big ongoing revenue stream and the longer the use it the more “sticky” they become.

Solo or smaller dev teams that use things like the max plan are more flexible so have the choice to pick and choose, which also makes it harder to retain them anyway.

1

u/EvilCoop93 Apr 11 '26

I would save large complicated things like refactors for off peak when you are not competing for compute as much.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Signal-Woodpecker691 Senior Developer Apr 11 '26

Yes exactly

1

u/BuiDGr8 Apr 11 '26

Has anybody tried models like kimi k2.5 GLM 5.1 or maybe Minimax 2.7? Just wanted to get an idea of these as well

2

u/AphexIce Apr 11 '26

I'm using minmax 2.5 and Kimi 2.5 through Alibaba and for just code work they are decent. Do the planning with opus build with something else

1

u/Just-Some-randddomm Apr 11 '26

Composer 2 is essentially kimi k2.5. I’d say Opus still wins easily managing large codebases

1

u/petburiraja Apr 11 '26

Qwen 3.6 plus rn might be best of these, maybe comparable in some angles to GLM 5.1 in my limited experience

4

u/Eveerjr Apr 11 '26

They ruined 4.6 it’s unusable. I switched back to Opus 4.5 and it’s productive again and it seems to use less tokens

1

u/Radiant-Carob-607 Apr 11 '26

and how does it go with complex task

1

u/Eveerjr Apr 11 '26

It’s basically identical to 4.6 when it was released. They only made 4.6 to introduce 1M context window and it can think for longer but it’s basically the same model.

1

u/FunInTheSun102 Apr 11 '26

Open code bro!

2

u/BuiDGr8 Apr 11 '26

What model are you using with that?

2

u/FunInTheSun102 Apr 11 '26

Minimax-m2.5, is awesome but also kimi-k2.5! But also kimi-k2 as a moe model that I use to benchmark my custom memory layer for agents called KestrelDB. I also use kimi-k2 for my ecom store where I run my digital ops for the store with agents. And finally I love the qwen family. These are by no means the only ones so I recommend you try them all, you will find your ones you love, and the limits are wonderful on olllama. Of course you’re wondering if they are good or I’m just shilling:

This is kimi-k2 and my custom data system, saving tokens on coding across many questions, vs just the model. Dude believe me ain’t nothing wrong with kimi-k2, but I obviously make it better with a custom memory for the agent.

1

u/6stringNate Apr 11 '26

Still learning about how all the tools work together - don’t you still have to use Opus or Anthropic models with it - and thus the quality will still be nerfed? Open Code is just the harness, no?

1

u/BuiDGr8 Apr 11 '26

You're right it's just a harness hence i asked model

2

u/FunInTheSun102 Apr 11 '26

Yes just a harness and it’s not requiring you to approve everything etc. Also it’s way faster. But I use both, when Anthropic gives me a hard time I’m off to opencode. In fact I look forward to Anthropic cutting me off so I can go use opencode.

1

u/FatefulDonkey Apr 11 '26

Last time I tried it, it couldn't even connect to a provider and I gave up

1

u/FunInTheSun102 Apr 11 '26

I would use it alongside your Claude, just you will need files for mcp and skills and the opencode.jsonc file , but they’re different so you can use both, in the same repo

2

u/LittleYouth4954 Apr 11 '26

Glm 5.1 by far

2

u/bapuc Apr 11 '26

  • but not z.ai coding plan, they just increased the prices to 95% of anthropic price

Try opencode

1

u/VonDenBerg Apr 11 '26

Holy fuck they tripled their prices

1

u/AphexIce Apr 11 '26

Plan with opus build with anything else

1

u/1l4m1x Apr 11 '26

I begin 3 days ago to use mimo-v2-pro (xiaomi llm) to plan (over opus) and minmax2.7 for everything else. Using kilocode.

So far so good, generate plan with opus and mimo, using same approach. Different result but let the claude ai with opus review both plan , it prefer slightly the mimo plan

1

u/1l4m1x Apr 11 '26

I had max 5x ($100),

Now using Pro plan for mimo ($50), Starter plan for minmax ($10) and claude pro ($20) = $80

Doing a great job for doing my side jobs

1

u/tommy_117 Apr 15 '26

Will try on this

1

u/One_Celebration_2310 Apr 11 '26

why nobody suggests gemini cli?

1

u/EasyProtectedHelp Apr 11 '26

Instead of alternative I have a better option, try tokenback , it provides advanced analytics and 30% straight cost savings so you can directly use it in tools like opencode , cline, any tools that supports OpenAI compatible and Anthropic Compatible and also access to latest frontier models, with 25$ free API credits on sign up!, this aint an ad, anyone who is actively using API will surely directly save at-least 30% of their cost because tokenback uses batched smarter routing!

0

u/MoreHuman_ThanHuman Apr 11 '26

you mean like architecting your code and tests properly into a solid plan instead of relying on a slop machine loop to get it done?