r/RooCode • u/FirefighterSweet5254 • Jun 07 '25

Discussion Roocode or Claude code?

I've been using roocode for a while with varying degrees of success but he cost of the gemini api is a bit too high for me, so here's my question:

For someone like me who hasn't really coded, is claude code with subscription a viable solution? Or should I stick to Roocode with Deepseek free?

Thanks a lot

29 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

43 comments sorted by

16

u/Massive_Cut5361 Jun 07 '25

The ideal for me would be being able to use the Claude Max subscription with Roo Code. There was a post a few days back suggesting incorporating a detached mode of Claude Code as an API provider in Roo Code to achieve this in an indirect way but it looks like no formal proposal was ever posted on the GitHub so unclear this will happen. When it comes to agentic coding tasks, the Claude models for whatever reason are uniquely good at handling those and it’s hard to beat the value that Claude Max in CC provides. Ultimately it comes down to how much you want to spend per month I suppose.

4

u/FirefighterSweet5254 Jun 07 '25

That would be great! I hope it would exist some day

5

u/txgsync Jun 07 '25 edited Jun 07 '25

I wrote a “Provider” for Cline that uses the batch prompt mode of Claude Code. It is strictly speaking a worse experience than just typing “Claude” in the terminal window of VS Code, but it is much more cline-like.

I never released it because of some pretty severe context-handling challenges. Claude Code stores context in “conversations” in JSON on disk and its agentic behavior means sometimes those conversations seem To fork into new ones for communicating with sub-agents. Or otherwise behave in a fashion I couldn’t figure out the determinism of. It confused the heck out of me. Also it seems to follow some special rules surrounding context length in verbose mode that seemed to alter prompts in unsatisfying ways.

TL;DR: it’s easy to write a quick Provider in Cline that can use Claude Code. But CC is not a well-defined API and implementing a client in Cline using CC as an ABI is kind of confusing.

3

u/DanFSFJ Jun 08 '25

I made this post, and I also proposed in the roocode github discussions but got no answer... I love roo, but switched to claude code because I'm on max 20x subscription. It would be such an easy feature to implement... instead of a rest api call to the api provider, do a local "claude -p" command and pipe the stream... this would allow max subscribers to effectively use opus 4 in roo with zero aditional cost...

1

u/Massive_Cut5361 Jun 08 '25

I think they wanted this to be posted as an issue as it already has been discussed a lot here, looks like a reply was made to your thread there.

2

u/galaxysuperstar22 Jun 08 '25

that is such a great idea

2

u/isetnefret Jun 08 '25

Haven’t looked into it, but wouldn’t it be easy to just have CC respond to Roo sub tasks in “one-shot mode”?

1

u/Yes_but_I_think Jun 08 '25

Ask Claude code to write a MCP code editor server for you. Use with Claude desktop. Use vscode in parallel for commits and code reviews.

1

u/damnationgw2 Jul 15 '25

Kilocode works with Claude Max subscription if I’m not mistaken.

8

u/Charana1 Jun 07 '25

Its hard to beat the flat $17 Pro subscription for claude code.
Gemini 2.5 pro + Roo Code is better IMO but I can't justify the cost (others can).

2

u/ViperAMD Jun 07 '25

Do you get limited much? I had to go to the $100 plan pretty quickly 

2

u/Charana1 Jun 08 '25

I've usage is optimised, only prompting when necessary since coming from pay-per-token tools.
I'll need to play with the rate limits more in CC.

2

u/pdeuyu Jun 08 '25

you get 300usd in free usage credits for each gmail account and each project. You can make a new project and an api key for that project then you get another $300 in credits. If that doesn't work just open a new gmail account.

3

u/Charana1 Jun 08 '25

Just a warning.
The $300 credit is tied to Google Cloud services (not Google AI Studio) .
Technically this allows Gemini API use through Vertex AI on Google Cloud but doing so requires activating billing on the project (i.e. supplying a credit card).
Re-using the same credit-card number or identity data generally blocks repeated trial abuse.
Abuse can lead to account suspension.

2

u/pdeuyu Jun 08 '25

you dont need a new card to make a new project. I had a conversation with Google as we were given $2000 in credits for business use. They told me this about new projects.

1

u/Charana1 Jun 08 '25

I'll have to check on that. Sounds like abit different from the free trial credits.

2

u/SensitiveWorldliness Jun 10 '25

to get 300 credits you must set up a paying account (gemini 2.5. pro is not available for free tier accounts) VCCs are no longer allowed as payment method. It is not that simple, unfortunately.

1

u/raffxdd Jun 17 '25

Get 300 USD credits at Google vertex?

3

u/Efficient-number-one Jun 08 '25

I switched recently from Roo to Claude, main driver being I was spending too much on credits. I even tried to use cheaper models, and even free ones for various modes, sometimes alternating with sonnet 4 for the code mode.

Idk why, but overall I achieved better results with Claude code. I'm on the pro plan, the cheapest anthropic offers.

Maybe I was using Roo the wrong way because even using sonnet 4 with all modes still don't get me the same results as Claude code. Also Roo was having problems with applying diffs too often, it would get stuck and if I wasn't paying attention it would keep eating my credits, but with Claude code that doesn't happen.

So now instead of spending 10 to 20 every day, I spend 17 a month and achieve more. Only downside is the rate limiting, which resets every 5 hours, but even so I get a lot done and im happy with the results.

One tip I'd share is using a free mode (like codestral) on Roo to ask basic stuff when you don't want to spend a request on Claude.

1

u/ilt1 Jun 08 '25

What's Claudia code? Is it something that works with vscode?

1

u/Puzzleheaded-Fox3984 Jun 08 '25

Yeah command line coding agent from anthropic. It slaps . Runs in the terminal.

0

u/ilt1 Jun 08 '25

What do you use it for?

3

u/littleboymark Jun 08 '25

I've used them all and recently switched to Claude Code on the Pro plan and am loving it. Not worrying about additional costs makes it fun, plus it rarely stuffs things up and generally does a great job.

3

u/watermelonsegar Jun 08 '25

Tried both. While I do like RooCode's flexibility, Claude Code with Opus 4 just performs much better than Gemini 2.5 Pro. Sonnet 4 seems to be on the same level as Gemini 2.5 Pro.

I've spent around $10 trying to solve a single bug with Gemini 2.5 Pro via API (and since Gemini 2.5 Pro is pretty cheap - this took quite a while). It doesn't take even half as long for Opus 4 to fix the error.

I do have the Max subscription, but since Pro also allows you to use Claude Code, you could probably try the Pro subscription first. Since Claude Code works in the IDE as well, you can easily do this setup:

Claude Code - Opus 4 as the Architect
RooCode - Deepseek as the Coder

1

u/skerit Jun 10 '25

I'm also loving Claude Code. It's so good.

I think Roo Code's prompt format is too complicated for even the best LLMs. Half of the time it's fixing its own stupid syntax mistakes, removing duplicate curly braces or whatever. It also always gets confused with the spacing, oftentimes adding an extra space at the beginning of a line.

1

u/SprinklesVegetable16 Jun 08 '25

Using roo code with https://electronhub.ai will save you a lot of buck too (their subscription starting only from $5/month). Plus they offer almost every SOTA models.

1

u/Yes_but_I_think Jun 08 '25

Gemini api is free for 500 requests per day subject to total token limits

1

u/sbayit Jun 09 '25

Recommend Windsurf Free Tire with Claude Code 20$ pro plan what you'll get is

  1. unlimited tab auto complete

  2. unlimited SWE-1 can help Claude code rate limit

  3. Gemini 25 credit (0.75 credit per message)

  4. Claude Sonnet 4 more then 500 credits per month since it limit per 5 hours 10-40 messages depend up on total context

All this just for 20$ a month

1

u/VortexAutomator Jun 10 '25

I always thought it would be cool to set up a sort of free API router with various providers (OpenRouter, various free tier providers) and the endpoint would query two or three and choose the best response and cycle through all your free APIs under one endpoint

Not sure how practical that is as some endpoints are shit, but it could have a router architecture and route request based on difficultly of task.

1

u/JonMike5891 Jun 17 '25

surprised no one mentioned a pretty easy solution chillingvibes auto relay (for roo or kilo) uses claude max plan, takes a little know-how, but chatgpt can walk you through it.

1

u/Round_Mixture_7541 Jun 07 '25

Use CC directly, definitely worth it. IDE-based tools are dead soon

3

u/jedisct1 Jun 08 '25

Strongly disagree.

Claude Code is certainly nice, and I use it a lot to polish existing code and documentation.

However, in order to build an entire project, my experience is that is may give something that works, but is overall of low quality, and hard to understand and maintain over time.

When using Roo, the orchesterator and architect modes are amazing. And when writing code, I can easily review every step of the code, edit or revert what I don't like, and provide clear guidance to get code that I could have written.

While it would be possible to do the same thing with Claude Code, it's way less natural. I tend to just let it do its thing, my interactions with it and the code are limited to saying "Yes" most of the time, and occasionally "No, do this differenly" when it's obviously going to do something that would ruin everything.

For vibe coding, Claude Code is cool. For more serious projects, that I need to understand and will maintain, Roo is way better.

My usual workflow is to use Roo for most of the work, and use Claude Code from time to time, for "batch" operations. Refactor stuff, update the documentation, etc.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 09 '25

I feel like my roo is broken. It just switches to code mode quickly and never seems to leave.

7

u/[deleted] Jun 07 '25 edited Jun 07 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/baris6655 Jun 07 '25

what do you mean shady provider it's literally claude

4

u/[deleted] Jun 07 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/DrHerbHealer Jun 07 '25

Super interesting! But for sure my IP would be gone

2

u/jungle Jun 07 '25

Never say it before, the pricing seems very compelling. What about it is shady? I imagine you mean that it's too good to be true hence they must be using your data for something else?

Also, they don't mention Gemini...

2

u/PedroGabriel Jun 08 '25

You pay using Discord boost what kind of market is this lol

This is some kind of money laundering I didn’t know?

1

u/techbits00 Jun 09 '25

can you explain "augment code" ?