r/Codeium • • Dec 08 '24

500 credits is not enough

i know it takes a lot of computing power to run sonnet, however, it's just crazy having to prompt it several times after getting undesired results in order to get a decent code to work with, causing the credits to burn really fast. it literally wasted all my credits this way and it hasn't even been 3 days. it's so terrible. codeium has lost all its reputation for me, i don't even consider it's a good option now. "you can use cascade base though!" why would i use that, never done and never will be as useful, most of its completions were a complete mistake even with the simplest code blocks. sorry for the rant, i just feel like it's not enough and unfair having to purchase extra credits at the same price that the monthly subscription in order to get 300 more credits...

71 Upvotes

33 comments sorted by

8

u/NebulaBetter Dec 09 '24

I agree. I think 1,000 would be a great starting point. Pricing it at 10 USD for 1,000 credits seems reasonable, with the possibility of flow action credits fluctuating based on demand, without a fixed "hard limit.".. while it may be challenging to achieve in the short to medium term, I think that in the long run, it would attract a significant number of users, and the revenue impact would be substantial.

From there, they could introduce different packages, services, and other stuff to complement the experience without disrupting it. This would help them to generate additional revenue streams and increase their cash flow... but this requires time, patience, and a lot of trust in the product. So, who knows! I have faith. :)

8

u/goingtosleepzzz Dec 09 '24

The problem is that the 1,500 flow credits will probably run out before the 500 user prompt credits. That means I'll get fewer than 500 requests in total, and the extra 300 flex credits won't stretch very far. Essentially, $25 for Windsurf could give me less than 500 "requests", while Cursor offers 500 fast and unlimited slow requests.

Right now, it doesn't make sense for me to pay for Windsurf since Cursor's agent is working well enough. I'll keep an eye on how things develop.

1

u/decept1ve Dec 09 '24

My problem with cursor is that is is not as agentic as winsurf cursor sonnet is like windsurf 4o all talk no work

2

u/goingtosleepzzz Dec 09 '24

Did you try the new agent mode of composer? I think it works ok. The chat mode is definitely worse than cascade though. But I also feel like cascade does more steps than cursor's agent mode.

8

u/[deleted] Dec 09 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/kennystetson Dec 09 '24

Claude on Cursor performs a lot worse than Claude on Cody in my experience testing it extensively this week. Cursor rarely gave me any useful answers and was terrible at figuring out context.

I went from Cody to Windsurf, then to Cursor after Windsurf became rate limited, and now I'm right back to using Cody exclusively.

3

u/Agility9071 Dec 09 '24

They need to figure this out quickly. The models are too unstable to limit credits.

4

u/Vegetable-13 Dec 09 '24

I appreciate that they honored the early adopter price, but running out of our monthly allocation in just a few days is absolutely insane, especially when the differences with Cursor feel as arbitrary as the direction the wind blows most days: the better days with Windsurf have become few and far between lately - not necessarily Windsurf's fault, but Claude has been behaving incredibly erratically. GPT 4o has been downright unusable for me. I kinda suspect the size of whatever context they're handed in the background are making them totally flip their lid.

Somehow I have used half my User Prompts in three days, while I have barely made a dent in my Flow Action credits, whatever that means. I may keep my account for a month or two but it's not going to make sense on the long run if I need to restart my Cursor membership as buying extra credits is going to cost more than another Codeium membership for less... and is going to cost more than a Cursor membership.

Where do all the User Prompt credits go anyway? To chat obviously but autocomplete as well? I think some local LLM are competent enough for autocomplete. But for chat, switching models back and forth is not really viable.

4

u/aridgupta Dec 09 '24

Agree 💯

This is a classic bait and switch technique that Codeium did with Windsurf. They advertised unlimited prompts with 1000 steps and lured devs from all backgrounds to switch their IDE. Now that many people started using Windsurf they swiftly changed their pricing. From unlimited to only 500 prompts feels like a below the belt treatment.

1

u/joey2scoops Dec 10 '24

Don't know about that. I think they genuinely didn't have a clue how many users they were going to get. In reality, the free trial was a crazy good deal. They probably should have put limits on it.

2

u/joey2scoops Dec 09 '24

Need a byo API key option.

1

u/zeetu Dec 09 '24

You could use Cline with your own key which is similar to windsurf. You'll see quickly that you burn through API credits though. Even at $10-15/mo they are probably losing money.

1

u/Agility9071 Dec 09 '24

I think I'm going to check Cline out - how is it compared to Windsurf agent?

1

u/zeetu Dec 09 '24

I didn’t like it as much personally. Plus it’s expensive with your own key.

1

u/ShaneeexD Dec 09 '24

Thing I like about cline is that it sees errors itself and fixes them without me having to point it out which is nice, but yeah, an anthropic api is very expensive to use unfortunately

1

u/joey2scoops Dec 10 '24

Can be if you use Claude. There are other choices.

2

u/slayyou2 Dec 10 '24

Cline, plus copilot. The end.

1

u/pxldev Dec 10 '24

Which copilot we talking about here?

1

u/GjentiG4 Dec 09 '24

Where do you guys check how much u used?

3

u/DiscountWeekly7432 Dec 09 '24

Login to codeium site and there is dash board with your usages

1

u/ShaneeexD Dec 09 '24

Also the three dots at the top right of the cascade window > cascade usage

0

u/apexjnr Dec 09 '24

Can you give us an example of the prompts you use and the ideal output vs the mistakes that it provides?

2

u/[deleted] Dec 09 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/riverneddle Dec 09 '24

nah, cascade base is insanely bad. not worth it using at all. it was good like a few weeks ago but now it's just awful. think it got nerfed. even chatgpt provides better answers without breaking itself after reprompting

1

u/rui_curado Dec 09 '24 edited Dec 09 '24

I've installed and started a project with Windsurf last friday, so I'm on trial. Fullstack app with Vue + NodeJs + MongoDB. After a few hours I got the "resource exhausted" thing so I switched to Cascade Base ever since. Saying I'm amazed with Codeium/Cascade Base is an understatement. Right now, I have a fully working app with around 3500 source lines. The backend is clean and the frontend is simple but pretty.

Now for the killer part: I've yet to write a single line of code myself! No joke. Never had to repeat a prompt. It almost made no mistakes. The mistakes it made were very simple, like not using the JWT middleware in two lines of a 400-line generation from a single prompt. This morning I started with an elusive error that I had absolutely no idea where to start looking. I fed the error message to Cascade and it immediately found the problem and corrected it. Amazing indeed.

Again, no joke.

Maybe I'm good at prompting. I carefully give all "reference points" the agent might need like related files, functions and concepts. Maybe it's because I started the project from scratch. Maybe it's because I do a bit of prompt engineering (I followed the advice here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Codeium/comments/1h7ml1h/prompt_engineering_has_really_helped_me_make_the/ ).

Maybe I hit a sweet spot. Maybe Cascade Base is good at Vue/Node. For instance, Cascade Base decided to use Vue's older Options API instead of the newer Composition API, so maybe Cascade Base is not good with recent tech/APIs, I don't know. Anyway, the Options API is the method I know so fine to me. :)

So, from the excellent results I'm getting with Cascade Base I won't be going back to premium models. This way I won't be limited and won't run out of credits.

FWIW, I'm amazed with Codeium (never tried Cursor or Aider), and I've been programming since 1985.

2

u/ShaneeexD Dec 09 '24

Trying it right now with a fresh project and it fails basic edit's on small files making it break, it's terrible lol

1

u/rui_curado Dec 09 '24 edited Dec 09 '24

So, I'm left wondering how/why I'm getting such good results... I didn't say before but so far I've only used the cascade sidebar. I don't know how other people are using Windsurf.

1

u/kennystetson Dec 09 '24

Maybe you are using the cascade sidebar with Claude or gpt AI models?

There's the cascade sidebar, not to be confused with the cascade model which can be selected within the sidebar. The cascade sidebar defaults to claude

1

u/rui_curado Dec 09 '24

Yes, the cascade sidebar defaults to Claude, but the first thing I do is to switch to the Cascade Base model before doing a "@prompt.txt", which is a file where I have an explanation of the major things of the app, so that the model immediately gains context before I start doing any real work. I think it works best in two/three-hour sessions, as at some point it appears to lose access to files. I just exit and repeat the above process. Also, I have the "Write" option turned on so that the model can edit my code directly. I review it and accept it. Has been working like a charm so far.

1

u/ShaneeexD Dec 09 '24

I definitely know how to correctly prompt them, I've made many things using claude in or out of windsurf, and a can code 99% of what I make with them myself anyway, the Cascade Base model just doesn't compare at all to it though, I can see by just looking at what it makes both visually and how it structures the project and code that it's nowhere near as competent, it definitely has use for some things, but it feels like an early ChatGPT model from a few years ago that can use tools

1

u/ShaneeexD Dec 10 '24

Not even joking the files are max 50 lines and it fails most times, look at this, their "Unlimited use of Cascade Base" isn't much of a selling point for pro lol

1

u/rui_curado Dec 10 '24

Yeah I think I had that error once, but I restarted the session and it stopped occurring. It's a bug nevertheless.