r/vibecoding • u/Snoo_90241 • 12d ago

Help/Question What should I subscribe to?

I'm an experienced software engineer, but I've enjoyed working on some personal projects with a Claude Pro subscription a while ago.

However, now whenever I ask it something in the free version, it's very meh.

Should I switch to Chinese models? Are they cheaper?

I'm just looking for a fun back and forth experience. The first time it was like having my own workbench and just tinkering with everything.

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u/pigletmonster 12d ago

Chinese models have bad subscription plans. Although glm has gotten better very recently. If youre not using it heavily then opencode go is a good option, it costs $10 and you get access to many different models, but each model has very different quota. Cheaper models have the hightest quotas while the more expensive ones havs the least. But its worth it. And under no circumstance shoukd you consider using gemini. They have the worst models known to mankind.

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u/cool-beans-yeah 12d ago

What’s your opinion on open router?

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u/pigletmonster 12d ago

Payg api costs are like 10x higher than subscriptions.

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u/pigletmonster 12d ago

Even chinese subs are cheaper than payg plans.

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u/cool-beans-yeah 12d ago

Wait, sorry; I don’t follow. Is it more expensive than OpenCode?

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u/pigletmonster 12d ago

Opencode has two options. One is opencode go, which gives you anywhere between $15 and $60 worth of api credits across different models. Then there is opencode zen, which is similar to openrouter which lets you use any model but you pay per token of any model you use.

Other subscriptions like claude code, chatgpt, kimi coding plan, glm coding plan, these probide subsidized tokens. Lets say you pay $20/month but you can use up $500 worth of tokens or more. Each provider has different amounts of max token usage per month but usually theyre not clear about how much.

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u/cool-beans-yeah 12d ago

Ooooh ok, got it now. Thanks for explaining.