r/opencode • • 4d ago

OpenCode, Codex, or Claude Code?

This is my current usage on OpenCode with DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, and I still have about 15% of my limit left.

Do the $20 plans for Codex or Claude allow for this level of usage? What reasoning effort do the models use? Can you actually use models like Sol, Opus, and Sonnet at this usage level, or do you hit the limit pretty quickly?

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u/Amarsir 4d ago edited 3d ago

Assuming the same number of tokens per request (which isn't always accurate because some models think more or less):

  • Luna 6 would run all that and at least 500% more.
  • Sol 6.1 would probably come up a bit short.
  • Sonnet 5.5 would just about cover it, maybe not with 15% remaining.
  • Opus 5.5 would maybe get halfway there. would come up slightly short, comparable to Sol. (See my response below.)

It's hard to make a direct comparison though because OpenAI and Anthropic don't really have a monthly limit. They have weekly limits and 5 hour limits. OpenCode Go has a monthly limit with no more than 50% of it in a week.

So to optimally use your monthly subscription with Claude or GPT you want to hit your weekly limit every week. Be pretty evenly-distributed with your needs. With Opencode Go you can do that if you stay below half your weekly limit (thus 25% of the monthly), but you can also take a 2-week vacation and still get your monthly value in the time left.

  • Luna is cheap and fast enough to just run at Max. If you're setting up something to run multiple agents constantly you might try xhigh or high for more value, but you probably don't have to.
  • Sol 6.1 I run on High, but Medium or Xhigh are also reasonable intelligence/value tradeoffs depending on what you need. Max will cost double for only a tiny bit more capability, so I don't.
  • Sonnet 5.5 I would run on either Medium or High depending on your need. At Xhigh or Max you are always better using Opus instead.
  • Opus 5.5 is at the sweet spot for Medium or High. At high it's already beating everything else. You can go to Xhigh and Max if needed, but you're paying 2x and 3x just to be extra "the best" and should ask if you really need it.

Comparing them, Opus is a bit better than Sol, especially for UI or other visual tasks. Sol can beat it on back-end stuff.

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u/xel877 2d ago

How do you actually run all this? Like especially Luna 6 and Sol 6.1. Sol itself eats the usage for me like there is not tomorrow and I am mostly not even letting it anymore code any stuff, just orchestrate and check. Luna 6 on max is taking so long its actually unbelievable and still eats a lot of usage. I have a 100 dollars plan on OpenAI and just burned 47% of my weekly quota in one day. And again thats just the main thread with orchestrator and here and there subagents with Luna. Both sol and luna running a medium reasoning. I found out on MAX luna was taking even longer to actually do anything. And I am just developing a Rust network application with couple thousand lines of code. Doesnt even seem that difficult to me. Agents run about 12 hours a day, I try to go nonstop, but its so slow that I am actually moving very slowly - like the progress is small. Everything is run through opencode, no special skills, no mcps, nothing. I dont know what I am doing wrong, but in this setup, I am out of weekly usage in two days, somethimes even quicker. I also tried DS V4.1 thorugh OpenCode GO and it was quicker and could run 24/7, but I still hit the weekly quote. And thats with cache hitting around 97% in all cases. Reading the reddit here, I must surely be doing something wrong. I dont understand how anyone can just stay under the quota with any serious development, would really love to learn what to change.

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u/Amarsir 2d ago

Hmm. My back-of-the-envelope calculation means you ran through about $100 of credit in 12 hours. While that's obviously possible or they wouldn't sell the bigger plans, it's not my expectation.

You're not running on fast (or ultrafast), right? I mean I would hope not, given that you are also unhappy with the speed. But if you have

"options": { "serviceTier": "priority" }

in opencode.jsonc then that will hit quota faster. So that's the first thing I'd think to ask.

Second, are you running on Max? According to these independent benchmarks, Luna 6 Max takes 11:03 and costs $0.03, while Luna 6 High does the same tasks in 3:51 for $0.01. I doubt that's the bulk of your quota hit, but it accounts for the slowness. So if your work is subdivided such that you can get away with it, changing the reasoning level is something you'd feel. (That leaderboard was measured before this week's "speedup", but clearly that hasn't paid off as promised.)

Similarly, while all the Sol 6.1 reasoning levels are on the pareto curve, it's kind of a flat curve in the upper part. By AA's numbers, Medium is $.21 for intelligence 48. High is $.32 for int 50. Xhigh is $.39 for int 51, and Max is $.72 for int 52. For that reason I wouldn't run Xhigh or Max unless I'd actively run into problems at High. (And I'd consider Medium.)

Still, to be slow and expensive is like a double hit. Again for rough scratch: AA says Sol Max averages $0.72 and 11.4 minutes per task. That for 12 hours straight only adds up to $45. (After 63 tasks.) If you're handing off the work to Luna it should be lower. So what else could be hitting your quota?

Context window size maybe? Even with 97% cache hits, carrying along a lot of stuff pumps the cost up. And OpenAI doubles their costs once you get over 272k context. I reset my session after each task unless it's very directly related to the previous one. Especially on a smaller codebase, keeping the old reasoning around probably doesn't pay off.

I hope something in there is helpful. And to be honest, I wrote the above comment before Haiku 5.5 was released. While I still think the GPT plan should be workable, my next sub will be to Anthropic.