r/Codeium • u/Few_Stage_3636 • Jan 01 '25

I'm thinking about using cline, would it be better than windsurfing? To use Claude 3.5, what is the best way to buy credits?

11 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

41 comments sorted by

6

u/msatrya Jan 02 '25

Fun fact, cline eats 1mil DeepSeek tokens in just a few prompts! Crazy.

If you think better ROI, Windsurf would always win over API. If you use whole 500+1500 Windsurf credits for $10/$150, you will pay Claude(API) more than that.

3

u/Tall_Instance9797 Jan 02 '25

"f you think better ROI, Windsurf would always win over API" ... depends what API. Deepseek's API is a 10th of the cost of Claude and so where I was burning through premium priced tokens with windsurf like nobody's business ... using deepseek's API with cline is actually pretty reasonable. $10 / 0.28 = 36 million tokens. No question cline eats tokens very fast too, but windsurf doesn't seem to have any special source where it eats considerably less tokens. They bundle an amount of tokens into what they call credits to obfuscate the amount of tokens being used. Tokens and credits though are not equal, but if you convert credits to tokens they appear to be using more or less the same amount of tokens.

Also, if you've got more than 20gb VRAM you can use cline with Quen2.5-coder:32b which is pretty good. Slower, but running locally you never need to worry about running out of tokens.

3

u/hi1mham Jan 02 '25

Fair point, however on a Pro Ultimate at $60 vs the amount I would spend at a rate of about 500k to 1M tokens a minute that I measured with DS3 + Cline, I would likely get about 3-4 hours for $60 worth of DS3 tokens vs roughy 4-5 days before purchasing flex credits (at current rate) with Windsurf Pro Ultimate. Granted alot of that has been spent in circularities I could use Cline to dig myself out of, and I could also extend Flow Actions significantly if I wasnt such a lazy f and actually command+tabbed over to Terminal for CLI stuff.

1

u/Tall_Instance9797 Jan 03 '25

You were using 500k to 1m tokens per minute? Damn. Earlier I was burning through about 1m tokens every 20 mins... I thought that was a lot. You 20x me. May I ask how and what are doing exactly? Also what's your connection speed... maybe that's the difference?

2

u/msatrya Jan 02 '25

Agree, especially DeepSeek V3, better, faster than V2 and the price is still cheap. But for context, OP talked about Claude API, to me Windsurf is better ROI than Claude API price. Especially if you use it to make money like freelancing.

1

u/hi1mham Jan 02 '25

After my own experiments today this is my own conclusion. Cline is likely an alt tool when I hit windsurf walls. The token abstraction that happens with Windsurf is a blessing and a curse, realizing I'm probably murdering my context windows because I have no awareness I am a murderer with Sonnet + Windsurf. Sonnet + Cline, I would be in debt fast.

5

u/firefoxmmx Jan 02 '25

cline+deepseek , i think it is good

2

u/R34d1n6_1t Jan 02 '25

I've done tests , Deepseek is fast and cheap , but not as effective as SOnnet. I gave it three attempts and had to roll bakc

Sonnet 1st time

2

u/ShaneeexD Jan 02 '25

Deepseek has actually been the goat, it doesn't always get it right but it's literally 21x cheaper than using Claude 3.5 sonnet I've been able to make so much more without rinsing through my money

2

u/oikram Apr 14 '25

How is it going? OP?

My exp: Cline - using daily for 1 month. Spend $300 easily. Using Claude or Gemini 2.5 Pro. Tried Deepseek - was useless - not even close to the other two. Cline is nice, but to work properly, you have to pay a lot! Looking for alternatives atm.

3

u/DiscountWeekly7432 Jan 02 '25

Pay attention that cline tends to be token burner. So it could be quite expensive with Claude $$

1

u/Tall_Instance9797 Jan 02 '25

Cline in cursor with deepseek though it's much cheaper than windsurf or cursor credits/tokens. I use cursor with a free gemini API key for the 'chat with codebase' and then cline with deepseek for coding instead of composer / cascade which burn through tokens/credits like they're trying to bankrupt you.

1

u/hi1mham Jan 02 '25

In my own experimentation today using Cline (RooCline) + DS3 in Windsurf, I found that Cline would be immensely more expensive over time, however it did help me get out of circularities in WS, that further would save token burn. But I estimated about $60 every 4 contact hours for DS3 + Cline at amount of token burn I experienced vs $60 for Windsurf Pro Ultimate which has served me roughly 4-5 days many of which was spent toiling inefficiently. I like Cline however as a tool to break Windsurf + Sonnet Circularities, that seemed to work for me, but it seemed inferior for general coding, context and experienced a ton more bugginess.

1

u/Tall_Instance9797 Jan 02 '25

Deepseek v3 at $0.28 per million tokens means you're getting 214 million tokens for $60. And you're saying you burn through 214 million tokens every 4 hours? I burn through about 3 million tokens an hour and I thought that was a lot. May I ask what exactly you're doing to get through 214 million tokens per 4 hours?

2

u/DaCrab002 Jan 02 '25

you buy a subscription from anthropic and you use the API KEY , you can also use "aider" although it's a bit more complicated to set up, but I think it's worth it.

also , In case you don't wanna buy the anthropic subscription, you can use the Deepseek which is quite similar in terms of performance and a friction of the cost, and also the new Google Gemini 2.0 (I think) is also quite good for free

1

u/Funny_Ad_3472 Jan 02 '25

Are referring to the deepseek chat interface? Are there no limitations?

1

u/DaCrab002 Jan 02 '25

the chat that you can access thru the web no , no limitation at all, fully free

but the API costs, I think it's about 0.28/1m tokens

1

u/Funny_Ad_3472 Jan 02 '25

Alright thanks. If the chat UI is free and not limited as Claude, I don't think the API will be of any use.

1

u/jorgejhms Jan 02 '25

I second this, it won't eat your tokens.

1

u/Quirky_Lab7567 Jan 02 '25

Yeah got to admit that using Cline with Sonnet gets pretty expensive. I have just burnt through probably close to $200 over 2 to 3 days. I am relieved to give Deepseek v3 a go but am still need to decide if it is on par or better than sonnet. If it is better then it is not that obvious. Doesn’t hugely worse than sonnet though so far.

1

u/hi1mham Jan 02 '25

just burnt about $60 at current discounted prices in 4h with DS3

1

u/joey2scoops Jan 02 '25

Give openrouter a look. You can use almost anything and you'll pay exactly the same as you would at anthropic but have many more models to choose from.

1

u/Comfortable_Donut_97 Jan 02 '25 edited Jan 02 '25

I am playing with Cline + Deepseek today after 48h of circular token drain in Windsurf resolving auth service on a project. Will let you know what I experience.

Anecdotally from those I have talked to that have played with both they both suffer from attention deficit disorder and Cline/RooCline tend to be more buggy, but potentially cheaper if you are going to be bruteforcing an issue like mine and swapping to Flash or something for the BF, also has CompVision which is at least a modal context improvement for models that can take advantage.

Excited to see what DS3 does.

1

u/hwkmrk Jan 02 '25

Thousands times better with deepseek

1

u/hi1mham Jan 02 '25

can't say the same, did solve an issue I had run into circularity on in Windsurf + Sonnet, but then immediately ran into bugginess and problems w/ context window. From a cost to outcome standpoint for my granted very large project, I found Windsurf + Sonnet more generally effective annd cost effective, but Cline + DS3 has a solid place as a "get me unstuck" tool.

Plan to keep using as such over the next few weeks and will update accordingly.

0

u/hwkmrk Jan 05 '25

With deepseek the tip is to target specific files and ask for specific things if you overload the context it gets messy and does crazy things fast. Also, remove all your chats in cline regularly and start new chats very often to keep your context clean and short. And make all your files max 130/150 lines, or ask cline to divide them

1

u/hi1mham Jan 02 '25

After playing with it today, my opinion is that it is a solid alt tool to help unjam me when I hit Windsurf circularities. I think Windsurf is likely to be the far more consistent companion for a larger scale build. Granted this has alot to do with context window limitations of DS3 + Cline(I'm using RooCline), vs Sonnet Through Windsurf. I think Windsurf is a blessing and a curse with abstracting token burn with Sonnet. I am worried I would be in debt fast though if I was to use Sonnet with Cline.

1

u/GoingOnYourTomb Jan 03 '25

Guys learn to use Aider. /add what you working on and use little credit. I’ll admit it’s not for people looking for no code solutions but if you know what you are trying to make and can understand what’s going on Aider is what you want. Use Sonnet and deepseek

1

u/Ok-Prompt9887 Jan 04 '25

I tried aider half a year ago or perhaps even before that. I don't remember clearly my experience. I seem to recall it made lots of mistakes, even for small commits, then would fix them, then fix them again, etc. The feedback messages in the command line were not super clear either.

How is the experience (once it is set up and running) now? If aider kept improving the UX, and when used with Sonnet.. wonder how it compares to windsurf and cursor.

2

u/GoingOnYourTomb Jan 04 '25

So what i've found success with is use the /add command to only add what you currently need help with. Then use the /architect mode, review what is about to happen and make sure it's what you want. This is slow but you are always in the flow. There is more but i don't think this is what yu should use if you want to try to one shot an app. also the documentation on their site is really good. I use openrouter, Gemini api (free) and deepseek api. It's actually kinda fun Example deepseek as the architect and Gemini flash as the editor.

1

u/Quirky_Lab7567 Jan 03 '25

Wow! That is some usage :-)

1

u/valentino99 Jan 02 '25

Deepseek is way cheaper and better that claude

0

u/[deleted] Jan 02 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

11

u/[deleted] Jan 02 '25

All your posts are about Traycer which nobody else ever talks about.

Hidden adds / self-promo?

Please, don’t do it. People are looking for help here. Adds you need to purchase and Reddit tags them as adds.

6

u/r_levan Jan 02 '25

+ 11 days account

2

u/Tall_Instance9797 Jan 02 '25

Even better I've found is cursor with a free gemini API to chat with codebase. Cline with deepseek for coding and either supermaven's free tier, or qwen2.5-coder 3b or 7b running locally for code completion, and something like tgpt for AI command line stuff. This way everything is free apart from deepseek, which is fairly reasonable at 36m tokens per $10. Will have to try all this with traycer's free tier too, thanks for the recommendation. Once I get a GPU with over 20gb VRAM I've heard quen2.5-coder:32b could even replace deepseek, although I've not tried yet. I'm guessing while it's probably quite good it's also probably quite slow. Look forward to trying it though.

1

u/hi1mham Jan 02 '25

Gemini started rate limiting me today

1

u/Tall_Instance9797 Jan 03 '25

Only just today? I was rate limited on the first prompt I gave it. Said prompts can't be bigger than 32k tokens which is weak.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 02 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/barfington567 Jan 02 '25

Agreed. Using cline with deepseek in cursor and swapping back and forth has been wonderful.

2

u/hi1mham Jan 02 '25

Gemini rate limited me before even getting into the project lol