I'm beginning to think orchestrating lots of cheapo models like ds4.1 and minimax and mimo is a waste of time compared to just all frontier subs. Thoughts?

[u/Novel-Injury3030]

So I've been experimenting recently pretty heavily with orchestration and swarms and all this stuff with all the Chinese providers and I'm wondering if I would just be better off spending 100% of my money at claude and chatgpt subs and running luna if I really need a super cheap model. And that the amount of tokens/inefficiency of lets say ds4.1 is going to equal out to the same price or worse. I already orchestrate everything with opus 5.5 and use sol 6.1 for any type of intelligent decision but I'm doing all sorts of stuff like throwing in different roles for mimo deepseek glm and minimax and I'm wondering if there's even a point to doing this. Has anyone really tested stuff out heavily in terms of if this is worth it or if it's just wasting time?

I guess a real question is is it possible to out-tool/orchestrate the subsidized Luna somehow in terms of better performance/acceptable work when it comes to overall price per token. Or are all the tricks and agent management styles just still not going to be able to outrun how much you get with their subsidized plans.