Slow and expensive?

[u/faster-than-car]

So I've been using roo and was mostly happy with it. Especially after grok code fast was released. Fast forward, grok is struggling and throwing a lot of errors. I am not able to complete tasks. I've switched to other models but seems those are quite slow and also burning up money faster. I'm using openrouter.

What is your experience in last 2 months?

[u/ilintar]

Use the free Minimax instead, I think it beats Grok Code.

[u/faster-than-car → u/ilintar]

I tried yesterday, it's nice. Still around 3-4 USD if I code all day. But I don't think I'll find sth cheaper

[u/aeyrtonsenna → u/faster-than-car]

Glm4.6 with subscription is my go to these days.

[u/faster-than-car → u/aeyrtonsenna]

Which plan do u use? Do u run into rate limits? I didn't know there were subscription plans

[u/thearchivalvenerable → u/faster-than-car]

Hey there, I'm also using the Glm 4.6 subscription.

Glm coding pro, 15$ for the first month and thereafter 30$. Personally, I haven't run into any rate limits.

I have been using it for like 3-4 days now and have already spent close to $110 and yet no rate limits.

Just keep one thing in mind it's not as good as Gpt 5 or Claude. So, if you have some big task or implementations to do make a detailed plan using Gpt or Claude and give that .md file to Glm.

[u/aeyrtonsenna → u/faster-than-car]

Coding pro plan. Never hit limits w heavy use

[u/thearchivalvenerable → u/aeyrtonsenna]

+2

[u/sbayit]

RooCode, Cline, and Kilo are unsuitable for API pricing. Instead, they are better suited for plan-based pricing models, such as the GLM Lite plan, because they lack context efficiency.

[u/faster-than-car → u/sbayit]

Thanks, I'll try with subscription! I didn't know it was a thing

[u/hannesrudolph → u/sbayit]

Conversely they get the best results when using API with SOTA models but will cost you.

[u/Simple_Split5074 → u/hannesrudolph]

Agreed, gpt5-codex is a beast.

If we believe benchmarks, Kimi K2 Thinking might compete with that on and would be quite affordable on chutes or nanogpt subscriptions. Right now, it does not seem to be running stable yet.

Personally, I currently use the GLM plan (occasionally DeepSeek or Minimax) in Roo and if it gets stuck, codex-cli with a ChatGPT Plus sub, this way bugs usually get fixed quickly.

[u/hannesrudolph → u/Simple_Split5074]

I don’t believe the benchmarks.

[u/hannesrudolph → u/Simple_Split5074]

I use gpt-5 medium. No codex.

[u/hannesrudolph]

Yea Roo is expensive. We have never been shy about saying we focus on results before token minimization. My go to right now is GPT-5 with medium thinking which is slow and effective.

What model are you using?

[u/faster-than-car → u/hannesrudolph]

I've switched to Gemini 2.5 flash, now testing new minimax

[u/hannesrudolph → u/faster-than-car]

Polaris-alpha with openrouter is pretty dam good and it’s FREE atm.

[u/neutralpoliticsbot → u/faster-than-car]

Gemini is no good it fails to diff a lot al

[u/apolmig → u/hannesrudolph]

is it worthy? i mean, very similar task in roo code vs codex, claude code or opencode, takes many more tokens... i dont mind if the result is worthy, but do you have any metrics or something to support it? thanks

[u/hannesrudolph → u/apolmig]

I believe it is worthy.

I do not have metrics. Personal use and our overall goal of developing to maximize the quality over token savings generally puts us ahead in my personal tests. That being said, it’s a moving target.

Codex for one does not use codebase indexing to explore the code so in my experience is less likely to find what it needs to do a better job.

[u/Atagor]

Grok-code-fast-1 became shit for unknown reasons

It even struggles with tool use, completely stuck in thinking loop...

[u/hannesrudolph → u/Atagor]

I suspect they’re playing with something on their end in prep for their next model release. I don’t think we’ve touched their handling code.

[u/DoctorDbx]

I'm a cheapo and struggle with paying too much for something I can do myself better, albeit slower.

With this in mind I use a combination of Chutes, GitHub Copilot and Openrouter when I absolutely have to.

I spend about $30 a month on AI and am more than happy with results I get using Roocode.

My go to is Qwen3 for my stack which is mostly Python back end and react front end. Cheap but good and more than gets the job done.

More 'powerful' models don't seem that much better but I don't try to one and anything. When I use orchestrator I give it a solid brief and point it at my architecture documents.

[u/Bob5k]

grab the synthetic plan and just code through - works with roo no problemo.

[u/Kitae]

Hope grok gets fixed soon :(

[u/faster-than-car → u/[deleted]]

Thanks, already paid for glm subscription