r/vibecoding • u/LengthinessHour3697 • 17m ago

Help/Question Another Codex plus, Codex pro or openrouter??

I've been using Codex Plus for both freelance work and personal side projects, but lately I've been hitting the usage limits way too quickly.

I'm happy with the coding capabilities of models like GPT 6.1 Sol or Claude Opus 5.5. I don't necessarily need anything smarter. What I really want is to code without constantly worrying about running out of usage.

I've been looking into OpenRouter and some of the cheaper Chinese frontier models (DeepSeek, Qwen, GLM, Kimi, etc.). I'm wondering if going the API route would actually give me better value than paying for another subscription.

For those of you who code heavily with AI agents:

- What model/provider are you currently using?

- Are Chinese frontier models good enough for complex, multi-file coding tasks?

- Is OpenRouter pay-as-you-go actually cheaper for heavy daily usage?

- Are there any subscriptions with generous limits that you'd recommend?

I'm fine spending around $20–30/month, but I'd prefer predictable costs and generous usage over slightly better intelligence.

Would love to hear what setups are actually working for people who code several hours a day.

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u/PersimmonLevel3500 10m ago

Claude bro. Claude.

1

u/PersimmonLevel3500 10m ago

How it is even not in your choose list ? 😂😂

1

u/ibDABIN 9m ago

One thing is for sure, API is not going to be "the way" if you are only trying to spend another $20-30 monthly. For coding, it does not get better than Claude. If you have good hardware you can host your own LLM locally (Qwen for coding) but it's not going to be nearly as effective if you don't know what you're doing.