People may feel differently about the fee that OpenRouter takes, but I think the service they provide is worth the extra cost.
Having access to dozens of models through a single API key, tracking cost of each request, being able to run the same request on different models and comparing their results next to each other, separating usages through different API keys, adding your own presets, setting your routing rules...
And once you start using an account with multiple users, it's even more useful to have all those features!
Not relying on a subscription and having the right to do exactly what you want with your API key (using it with any tool/harness...) is also a big plus to me.
I agree with you in certain circumstances, but not really for internal user inference. OpenRouter is great if you need to maintain uptime, but for basic usage (chat/coding/self-agents) you can do all of what you mentioned and more with a LiteLLM instance. The number of companies that send a bill is rarely a concern when it comes to “is work getting done”, but I agree with you that minimizing user friction is best.
For general use, I personally don’t see much justification as to why I would want to pay a per-token fee just to not create a few accounts with my trusted providers and add them to an instance for users. It is transparent to users beyond them having a single internal API key (or multiple if you want to track specific app usage) for all the models they have access to, with limits and logging. They wouldn’t even need to know what provider is hosting the model and the underlying provider could be swapped without users knowing.
It is certainly easier to pay a fee per token on a small scale and not have to run an instance, so less technical users could definitely find advantage in just sticking with OpenRouter.
So you pay OpenRouter with cryptocurrencies, which they accept as a payment method, and then what, they block your account because the cryptocurrencies you paid with came from some account on the blockchain associated with other stuff?
Or what are you really saying here? I don't understand how that's related to "you don't have the right to do what you want with the API Key", which is the FUD part.
You pay openrouter with dirty crypto, then you have a business which simply resells openrouter giving you clean fiat. I think openrouter specifically only banned those kind of accounts since that's what I have observed from other comments / research. numlocked in this thread has explicitely said that they don't ban accounts for any of the reasons specified above which narrows down the scope to some form of broken ToS specifically around fraud and money laundering.
You are not allowed to resell Openrouter as an API yourself, so for example if you make a service that charge per token, you can't use Openrouter API for that, this is specified in their ToS, so no, you can't do what you want, what FUD?
Quote from their own TOS: access the Site or Service for purposes of reselling API access to AI Models or otherwise developing a competing service;
Yeah, you're not allowed to do things that are specifically spelled out in the ToS, how is this surprising? Of course you don't get "unlimited access to do whatever you technically can", APIs never worked like that, why would they suddenly work like that?
When you say "you don't have the right to do what you want with the API Key" it makes it sound like specific use cases are disallowed, or something similar. "You don't have the right to go against the ToS, for some reason they block you then!" would have been very different, and of course it's like that.
Bit like complaining that Stripe is preventing you from accepting credit card payments for narcotics. Yes, just because you have an API key doesn't mean somehow you can do whatever you want.
That's very different from the Stripe example, as opening a service like Openrouter isn't illegal, so that's only coming from it being opinionated, nothing to do with the law. And my example was for not so specific use cases but quite general one which is just to open let say a service like Opencode Zen and use Openrouter as a backend, this is explicity forbidden by Openrouter and it isn't against the law, that's not just a "niche use case".
Are we allowed yes or not to make a service that charge per Token to end-users, like giving access to Kimi K2.5 to end-users through Openrouter in a pay per token basis?
I'm running out of Claude session limits in a single planning + implementation session even when using sonnet for the implementation. This isn't even super complex work - it was refactoring a data model, modifying templates/apis/services, etc. It has also gotten notably more 'lazy' like it updated the data model and not the template until I specifically pointed that out.
My backup has been Opencode + Kimi K2. It's definitely not as strong as even Sonnet but it's pretty fast and is serviceable for basic web app work like the above.
On the topic of Zed itself as a VSCode replacement - my experience is mixed. I loved it at first, but with time the papercuts add up. The responsiveness difference isn't that big on my system, but Zed's memory usage (with the TS language server in particular) is scandalous. As far as DX goes it's probably at 85% of the level VSCode provides, but in this space QoL features matter a lot. Oh, and it still can't render emojis in buffers on Linux...
I have 4-5 typescript projects and one python opened in Zed at any given time (with a bunch of LSPs, ACPs, opened terminals, etc.) and I see around 1.2 - 1.4gb usage.
I opened just one of the typescript projects inside VSCode and I see something like 1gb (combining the helpers usage). I'm not using it actively, so no extra plugins and so on.
That's on mac, so I guess it may vary on other systems.
had been using claude max/opus with pi and the results have been incredible. Having pi write an AGENTS.md and dip your feet into creating your own skills specific to the project.
With the anthropic billing change (not being able to use the max credits for pi) I think I have to cancel - as I'm whirring through credits now.
Going to move to the $250/mo OpenAI codex plan for now.
I really love it. The simplicity is key. The first play project I made with it was a public transport map with GTFS data - click on a stop and get the routes and the timetables for the stop and the surrounding ones. I used Qwen3.5-35B on Mac M1 Max with oMLX. It wrote 98% of the code with very little interaction from me. And very useful is the /tree feature to go back in history when the model is on a wrong track or my instructions where not good enough. I usually work in a two path approach: first let the model explore what it needs to fulfill the task and write it into CONTEXT.md (or any other name to your liking). Then restart the session with the CONTEXT.md. That way you are always nicely operating in 5-15k context, i.e. all is very fast. Create an account for pi (or docker) and make sure it can't walk into other directories - it has bash access.
Add the browser-tools to the skills and load them when useful:
https://github.com/badlogic/pi-skills
No need for database MCP, I use postgres and tell it to use psql.
Occasionally I use prettier to remove indentation - the LLM makes a lot less edit errors that way. Just add the indent back before you commit. Or tell pi to do it.
Reluctantly, the dev seems to have a stinky attitude.
He went on an "OSS vacation", which is perfectly reasonable and said he'd be back on a certain date. I had a PR open for a trivial fix, someone asked when it would land. I shared he was still away. After his return I politely asked, "@badlogic hey, what can we do to progress this? Thanks x"
I then got what I would consider an abusive reply, because he confused me with someone else. In the meantime he extended his vacation. Didn't even think his shitty attitude was worthy of an apology, that HE confused me with someone else.
Now he's seemingly marked anything with my name on as a "clanker", despite all my changes being by hand.
I've been around open source enough to have a thick skin, but when i'm doing something "for fun" and someone treats you like that, i'd rather avoid it as far as possible. I certainly could not in good faith use this project for anything work related.
> Honestly, it seems you are grumpy, so it was probably a good idea to extend that vacation. Being rude just creates a more toxic environment for everyone. Maybe extend that break for the rest of the month and come back nicer? Thanks
Honestly, it seems like both of you were feeling a bit "grumpy" at the moment, but sending passive aggressiveness towards the maintainer you are trying to get to merge your code (or not your code, someone else's code?) seems like a very bold strategy regardless.
You know, when I wrote that I genuinely meant it, or at least I think i did. It wasn't supposed to be passive aggressive. :(
But that doesn't negate the maintainer talking to people like that (and taking contributions without attribution).. and the net result is I don't want to use the software, and frankly they probably won't miss me.. so the end result is neutral.. I just find it sad.
I mostly use Opus via Copilot with opencode, and I'll tell you, in the past few days, I've had long sessions (almost the whole day) without hitting rate limits. That's very different from Claude Code, which used to rate-limit me before even halfway through the day.
I haven't tried $20 claude code recently, but I've used OpenCode Zen primarily so I can play with opensource/chinese models which are very inexpensive. I'd spend $0.50-$1.00 on a single claude opus 4.6 plan mode run, then have a chinese model execute the plan for like $0.10-$0.15 total. I'd keep context short, constantly start new threads, and get laser focused markdown plans and knowledgebase to be token efficient.
If I just let opencode zen run claude opus to plan and execute, I'd spend $20 in like 5 minutes lol
Whenever a new one comes out, there's a good chance they're free for a week on Zen, so I try out any free ones. For example, MiniMax M2.5 and Qwen 3.6+ are free right now.
Personally, I've had a lot of good results in my little personal projects with Kimi K2.5, GLM 5 and 5.1, and MiniMax M2.5.
My 50c - ollama cloud 20$. GLM5 and kimi are really competitive models, Ollama usage limits insane high, no limits where to use (has normal APIs), privacy and no logging
I don't think there's currently better value than Github's $40 plan which gives you access to GPT5 & Claude variants. It's pay per request so not ideal for back-and-forth but great for building complex features on the cheap compared to paying per token.
Because GH is accessing the API behind the scenes, you should face less degradation when using Sonnet/Opus models compared to a Claude subscription.
Keep a ChatGPT $20 subscription alongside for back-and-forth conversations and you'll get great bang for buck.
I'm still paying the 10$ GH copilot but I don't use it because :
- context is aggressively trimmed compared to CC obviously for cost saving reasons, so the performance is worse
- the request pricing model forces me to adjust how I work
Just these alone are not worth saving the 60$/month for me.
I like the VSCode integration and the MCP/LSP usage surprised me sometimes over the dumb grep from CC. Ironically VSCode is becoming my terminal emulator of choice for all the CLI agents - SSH/container access and the automatic port mapping, etc. - it's more convenient than tmux sessions for me. So Copilot would be ideal for me but yeah it's just tweaked for being budget/broad scope tool rather than a tool for professionals that would pay to get work done.
You can use your GH subscription with a different harness. I'm using opencode with it, it turns GH into a pure token provider. The orchestration (compacting, etc.) is left to the harness.
It turns it into a very good value for money, as far as I'm concerned.
But you still get charged per turn right ? I don't like that because it impacts my workflow. When I was last using it I would easily burn through the 10$ plan in two days just by iterating on plans interactively.
GHCP at least is transparent about the pricing: hit enter on a prompt= one request. CC/Codex use some opaque quota scheme, where you never really know if a request will be 1,2,10% of your hourly max, let alone weekly max.
I've never seen much difference with context ostensibly being shorter in GHCP, all of the models (in any provider) lose the thread well before their window is full, and it seems that aggressive autocompaction is a pretty standard way to help with that, and CC/Codex do it frequently.
>I've never seen much difference with context ostensibly being shorter in GHCP, all of the models (in any provider) lose the thread well before their window is full, and it seems that aggressive autocompaction is a pretty standard way to help with that, and CC/Codex do it frequently.
Then we've had wildly different results. Running CC and GH copilot with Opus 4.6 on same task and the results out of CC were just better, likewise for Codex and GPT 5.4. I have to assume it's the aggressive context compaction/limited context loading because tracking what copilot does it seems to read way less context and then misses out on stuff other agents pick up automatically.
And don't you think they're going to realize soon that it's also pretty good at "doing penetration testing" for your company when it's already trained on your company's source code?
I would suggest to explore paid plans on different providers. Much better value than plans bundled with editors or API based usage in openrouter. And Chinese companies have versions hosted in Singapore or US.
Also ditching Claude Code is mistake. It is quite capable model, and still great value. I would keep it, even if it's just for code reviews and planning. Anthropic allows pro plans use in Zed.
It should be noted about Openrouter that you aren't allowed to expose the access to end users, it has to be for internal usage only, which can be fatal as they have made waves of account banning lately (without warnings).
You are absolutely allowed to expose access to end users, as long as you continue to abide by terms of service. We have hundreds, if not thousands, of apps built on openrouter that in turn have end users of their own. We showcase many of them on our /apps ranking page!
I was actually wondering about this since I've seen like 3 comments talking about the same thing, would it happen to be related to money laundering due to the availability of the crypto payment method?
OpenRouter recently started enforcing account-level regional restrictions for providers that enforce it (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) - ie blocking accounts that look like they are being used by users in China. The regional restriction used to be based on the Cloudflare edge worker IP's geolocation and enforced upstream, so a proxy/server running inside of supported regions would get around the geoblocks, but now OpenRouter are using (unspecified) signals like your billing address to geoblock. People say "banned" because the error message says "Author <provider> is banned", which really should be read as "Unable to use models from provider due to upstream ban".
What illegal activity? What another user pointed out about crypto isn't it, I'm talking about the fact that you can't open a service through Openrouter and charge your users per Token (aka "reselling" Openrouter), since when is this illegal?
I like and do use Zed but be aware functionality like Hooks is not supported for their integration with Claude Code, as a heavy user of Hooks I would stick with the terminal.
I'm always interested in how people use tools. I like to have a full editor to review code as a complement to the CLI and as I don't often use hooks the integration is also good enough for me.
1. What do you use the hooks for?
2. Do you use an editor alongside the CLI to review code or only examine the diffs?
When I use the tool ccusage it says I use $600 of usage a month for my $100. I don’t know that this is a good value proposition for me if I want to stay with the same model, half the reason I use Claude code, personally.
The new gimped claude code limits means my claude code spend the last month is $131. It cost me $20. I did an additional spend $5 on extra usage which cost me $5.
While VC's are setting fire to money I am going to warm my hands.
I think it is worth noting that “what they charge for api access” != “marginal cost of inference”. So I don’t think getting i.e. $40 of api usage for $20 would be insane. $131 for $20 does probably mean somebody is losing money though.
I ran this just now and for a small web-app I built I used over $50 in a single day. This was using superpowers plugin and almost exclusively coordinating through Opus. Could I get by with 100$ a month without the subscription? Maybe, but I pay for the convenience of just being able to throw Opus with lavish plugins at it (with 5h limits that are, in my opinion, pretty reasonable). I don't really WANT to have to think about when Haiku or Sonnet are enough.
If anything I would consider switching to OpenAI subscription (if I didn't despise them even more than Anthropic as a company), but converting to API use seems completely infeasible to me. I'd have to severely cut back on my use for not much benefit, other than having maybe an agent thats a little less jank than CC.
Depending on your workflow, in the spirit of reallocating $100/Month subscription, it may be worth dropping to the $20/Month plan (or equivalent at other providers) and then pay as you go on the (rare) occasions you "build a small web-app I built and used over $50 in a single day".
But at that point we are just min/maxing the details, and all I can say is if you are on a $100/$200 a month subscription to any of these services and not using them regularly then you shouldn't be on a $200 subscription any more than you should be on a $700 a month gym membership when you go every 3 months for 15 minutes.
Nah I get you, but for me personally, I do use CC a ton. It's building me so many useful internal tools right now, and deep research is also bootstrapping me into some new hobbies etc. I think I'm kind of in a rare-ish (maybe not so much on HN, but for the general population) spot where I'm not really trying to make some SaaS get quick rich scheme, but just directing CC to make apps that would take me a few days to make in a few hours, smoke test them, and solve a problem I had before. (e.g. photo tagging automation, MCP connections for personal services for documentation of chats or setting up todos, ansible playbooks for VMs, setting up data pipelines from external APIs for home automation...)
I deffo get more perceived value out of it than the 100$ I pay.
Could I get MORE value with the same 100$? imo only through OpenAI (no harness lock in and more lenient limits), but I deeply dislike the way their company is evolving. Admittedly, recent launches from Anthropic like managed agents and Mythos Preview don't make me very hopeful the individual developer pricing is here to stay, but I'll use what I can get while I can get it.
Could I get my required value with less than 100$? Mayyybe I could get by with like, three Anthropic 20$ plans? or 2x20$ and an OAI 20$? but this is so min-maxy that I just don't really want to bother. Pay by token would kill my workflow instantly. I'd have to add so many steps for model selection alone. I'll cross that bridge when Anthropic cuts me off.
I agree though most people on the $200 plans are either just not using them or in some deep AI psychosis. I'd like to exclude myself from these groups, but the pipeline to AI psychosis seems very wishy washy to begin with (the thread the other day about iTunes charts being AI dominated had a surprising amount of people defending AI music, imo).
Our bank (a major retail bank in UK) is refusing doing business with OpenRouter and OpenRouter issued a refund which we did not request. So something is up. There is that.
I might be paranoid but I feel that access to models will become more constraint in the future as the industry gets more regulated.
Bank refused to provide reasons - even after a formal complaint was raised with them.
We are not the only one. I found other people online experiencing the same issue. It is hard to tell how wide-spread this is but it is strange to say the least.
I have had credits on open router that haven’t been deleted since near the projects launch, I believe 365 days is not a rule but rather a right reserved.
COO of OpenRouter here. Thats right — we haven’t done it to date but we can’t have unlimited liabilities stacking up forever. At some point we will start expiring credits from accounts that have seen zero activity in over a year.
Maybe a bad suggestion, but can you do an inactivity "fee" - 25% / year (min $5) or something similar. I like the pre-pay system everyone in Ai seems to have settled on, its better than the AWS bills that we all know and love.
Thank you for taking the time to explain that - makes sense. I lifted what was present in your terms of service as I'd like to understand the minimum time I have.
Rather than trying to lie and get people to use your service, be honest what the upsides/downsides are, and only add your spam when it's at least a bit related, otherwise it just comes off as insincere when you're spamming your own platform in unrelated threads.
You are absolutely correct, I was not aware of this. I will update the article accordingly and perhaps it's more worthwhile to stay solely on Cursor with the limited models.
Sadly Zed seems to add 10% so it's still more worthwhile to use OpenRouter.
When you consider the cross section of the tech community posting on HN, is it really that surprising?
It’s mad for sure, but I’d bet 99.9% of people spending money on AI aren’t spending their own hard earned sooo… “YOLO it’s a business expense/investment”…
People may feel differently about the fee that OpenRouter takes, but I think the service they provide is worth the extra cost.
Having access to dozens of models through a single API key, tracking cost of each request, being able to run the same request on different models and comparing their results next to each other, separating usages through different API keys, adding your own presets, setting your routing rules...
And once you start using an account with multiple users, it's even more useful to have all those features!
Not relying on a subscription and having the right to do exactly what you want with your API key (using it with any tool/harness...) is also a big plus to me.
I agree with you in certain circumstances, but not really for internal user inference. OpenRouter is great if you need to maintain uptime, but for basic usage (chat/coding/self-agents) you can do all of what you mentioned and more with a LiteLLM instance. The number of companies that send a bill is rarely a concern when it comes to “is work getting done”, but I agree with you that minimizing user friction is best.
For general use, I personally don’t see much justification as to why I would want to pay a per-token fee just to not create a few accounts with my trusted providers and add them to an instance for users. It is transparent to users beyond them having a single internal API key (or multiple if you want to track specific app usage) for all the models they have access to, with limits and logging. They wouldn’t even need to know what provider is hosting the model and the underlying provider could be swapped without users knowing.
It is certainly easier to pay a fee per token on a small scale and not have to run an instance, so less technical users could definitely find advantage in just sticking with OpenRouter.
Expect you don't have the right to do what you want with the API Key (see waves of ban lately, many SaaS services have closed because of it).
Unless you provide some more details, at least outline what "do what you want" was in your case, this seems like just straight up FUD.
openrouter accepts crypto so might have been some money laundering involved for reselling dirty crypto for llm api.
if that wasn't the reason, hey that's actually a great way to launder money (not financial advice).
So you pay OpenRouter with cryptocurrencies, which they accept as a payment method, and then what, they block your account because the cryptocurrencies you paid with came from some account on the blockchain associated with other stuff?
Or what are you really saying here? I don't understand how that's related to "you don't have the right to do what you want with the API Key", which is the FUD part.
You pay openrouter with dirty crypto, then you have a business which simply resells openrouter giving you clean fiat. I think openrouter specifically only banned those kind of accounts since that's what I have observed from other comments / research. numlocked in this thread has explicitely said that they don't ban accounts for any of the reasons specified above which narrows down the scope to some form of broken ToS specifically around fraud and money laundering.
And then you go on HN and post "you don't have the right to do what you want"? Yeah, FUD and good riddance if so.
You are not allowed to resell Openrouter as an API yourself, so for example if you make a service that charge per token, you can't use Openrouter API for that, this is specified in their ToS, so no, you can't do what you want, what FUD?
Quote from their own TOS: access the Site or Service for purposes of reselling API access to AI Models or otherwise developing a competing service;
Yeah, you're not allowed to do things that are specifically spelled out in the ToS, how is this surprising? Of course you don't get "unlimited access to do whatever you technically can", APIs never worked like that, why would they suddenly work like that?
When you say "you don't have the right to do what you want with the API Key" it makes it sound like specific use cases are disallowed, or something similar. "You don't have the right to go against the ToS, for some reason they block you then!" would have been very different, and of course it's like that.
Bit like complaining that Stripe is preventing you from accepting credit card payments for narcotics. Yes, just because you have an API key doesn't mean somehow you can do whatever you want.
That's very different from the Stripe example, as opening a service like Openrouter isn't illegal, so that's only coming from it being opinionated, nothing to do with the law. And my example was for not so specific use cases but quite general one which is just to open let say a service like Opencode Zen and use Openrouter as a backend, this is explicity forbidden by Openrouter and it isn't against the law, that's not just a "niche use case".
Are we allowed yes or not to make a service that charge per Token to end-users, like giving access to Kimi K2.5 to end-users through Openrouter in a pay per token basis?
That was a different user who wrote that.
Yeah, I didn't mean them specifically, more a general "you".
I'm running out of Claude session limits in a single planning + implementation session even when using sonnet for the implementation. This isn't even super complex work - it was refactoring a data model, modifying templates/apis/services, etc. It has also gotten notably more 'lazy' like it updated the data model and not the template until I specifically pointed that out.
My backup has been Opencode + Kimi K2. It's definitely not as strong as even Sonnet but it's pretty fast and is serviceable for basic web app work like the above.
On the topic of Zed itself as a VSCode replacement - my experience is mixed. I loved it at first, but with time the papercuts add up. The responsiveness difference isn't that big on my system, but Zed's memory usage (with the TS language server in particular) is scandalous. As far as DX goes it's probably at 85% of the level VSCode provides, but in this space QoL features matter a lot. Oh, and it still can't render emojis in buffers on Linux...
I have 4-5 typescript projects and one python opened in Zed at any given time (with a bunch of LSPs, ACPs, opened terminals, etc.) and I see around 1.2 - 1.4gb usage.
I opened just one of the typescript projects inside VSCode and I see something like 1gb (combining the helpers usage). I'm not using it actively, so no extra plugins and so on.
That's on mac, so I guess it may vary on other systems.
Same here: I found the multibuffers feature really useful, but the extension system really couldn't hold a candle to VS Code at the time of my testing
Spent a couple of hours trying to make the Svelte extension ignore a particular type of false positive CSS error, failed, and returned to VS Code
Will definitely give it another chance when the extension system is more mature though!
Has anyone (other than OpenClaw) used pi? (https://shittycodingagent.ai/, https://pi.dev/)
Any insights / suggestions / best practices?
had been using claude max/opus with pi and the results have been incredible. Having pi write an AGENTS.md and dip your feet into creating your own skills specific to the project.
With the anthropic billing change (not being able to use the max credits for pi) I think I have to cancel - as I'm whirring through credits now.
Going to move to the $250/mo OpenAI codex plan for now.
Yes, it's super cool. Check Mario's latest talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dli5slNaJu0 Armin also has some videos covering it on his channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ArminRonacher/ Pi's Discord is still nice, even though it was a bit flooded after the openclaw thing.
I really love it. The simplicity is key. The first play project I made with it was a public transport map with GTFS data - click on a stop and get the routes and the timetables for the stop and the surrounding ones. I used Qwen3.5-35B on Mac M1 Max with oMLX. It wrote 98% of the code with very little interaction from me. And very useful is the /tree feature to go back in history when the model is on a wrong track or my instructions where not good enough. I usually work in a two path approach: first let the model explore what it needs to fulfill the task and write it into CONTEXT.md (or any other name to your liking). Then restart the session with the CONTEXT.md. That way you are always nicely operating in 5-15k context, i.e. all is very fast. Create an account for pi (or docker) and make sure it can't walk into other directories - it has bash access. Add the browser-tools to the skills and load them when useful: https://github.com/badlogic/pi-skills
No need for database MCP, I use postgres and tell it to use psql.
Occasionally I use prettier to remove indentation - the LLM makes a lot less edit errors that way. Just add the indent back before you commit. Or tell pi to do it.
i really have been enjoying pi a lot
at first i thought i was goring to build lots of extra plugins and commands but what ended up working for me is:
- i have a simpel command that pulls context from a linear issue
- simple review command
- project specific skills for common tasks
Reluctantly, the dev seems to have a stinky attitude.
He went on an "OSS vacation", which is perfectly reasonable and said he'd be back on a certain date. I had a PR open for a trivial fix, someone asked when it would land. I shared he was still away. After his return I politely asked, "@badlogic hey, what can we do to progress this? Thanks x"
I then got what I would consider an abusive reply, because he confused me with someone else. In the meantime he extended his vacation. Didn't even think his shitty attitude was worthy of an apology, that HE confused me with someone else.
https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/discussions/1475#discuss...
And another other thing I fixed with no attribution, just landed it himself separately. https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/discussions/1080
and
https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/issues/1079#event-223896...
Now he's seemingly marked anything with my name on as a "clanker", despite all my changes being by hand.
I've been around open source enough to have a thick skin, but when i'm doing something "for fun" and someone treats you like that, i'd rather avoid it as far as possible. I certainly could not in good faith use this project for anything work related.
> Honestly, it seems you are grumpy, so it was probably a good idea to extend that vacation. Being rude just creates a more toxic environment for everyone. Maybe extend that break for the rest of the month and come back nicer? Thanks
Honestly, it seems like both of you were feeling a bit "grumpy" at the moment, but sending passive aggressiveness towards the maintainer you are trying to get to merge your code (or not your code, someone else's code?) seems like a very bold strategy regardless.
You know, when I wrote that I genuinely meant it, or at least I think i did. It wasn't supposed to be passive aggressive. :(
But that doesn't negate the maintainer talking to people like that (and taking contributions without attribution).. and the net result is I don't want to use the software, and frankly they probably won't miss me.. so the end result is neutral.. I just find it sad.
I'm not sure how you'd be able to interpret that as anything other than passive aggressive.
I also dropped Claude Code Max.
I switched to OpenCode Zen + GitHub Copilot. For some reason, Claude Code burns through my quota really quickly.
https://opencode.ai/zen
How does Claude Code compare to OpenCode Zen? I’m on the $20/month Claude plan, and was considering OpenCode Zen as well.
Due to the quota changes, I actually find myself using Claude less and less
I mostly use Opus via Copilot with opencode, and I'll tell you, in the past few days, I've had long sessions (almost the whole day) without hitting rate limits. That's very different from Claude Code, which used to rate-limit me before even halfway through the day.
Just cancelled my Claude plan, so that I can switch over when it expires in a week. The usage limits somehow just make me less productive with it.
I haven't tried $20 claude code recently, but I've used OpenCode Zen primarily so I can play with opensource/chinese models which are very inexpensive. I'd spend $0.50-$1.00 on a single claude opus 4.6 plan mode run, then have a chinese model execute the plan for like $0.10-$0.15 total. I'd keep context short, constantly start new threads, and get laser focused markdown plans and knowledgebase to be token efficient.
If I just let opencode zen run claude opus to plan and execute, I'd spend $20 in like 5 minutes lol
Which chinese models do you use and do you use any for specific tasks?
Whenever a new one comes out, there's a good chance they're free for a week on Zen, so I try out any free ones. For example, MiniMax M2.5 and Qwen 3.6+ are free right now.
Personally, I've had a lot of good results in my little personal projects with Kimi K2.5, GLM 5 and 5.1, and MiniMax M2.5.
After hitting Claude limits today I spent the afternoon using OpenCode + GLM 5.1 via OpenRouter and I was very impressed.
OpenCode picked up my CLAUDE.md files and skills straight away, and I got similar performance to Opus 4.6.
How much did it cost for how long?
My 50c - ollama cloud 20$. GLM5 and kimi are really competitive models, Ollama usage limits insane high, no limits where to use (has normal APIs), privacy and no logging
I don't think there's currently better value than Github's $40 plan which gives you access to GPT5 & Claude variants. It's pay per request so not ideal for back-and-forth but great for building complex features on the cheap compared to paying per token.
Because GH is accessing the API behind the scenes, you should face less degradation when using Sonnet/Opus models compared to a Claude subscription.
Keep a ChatGPT $20 subscription alongside for back-and-forth conversations and you'll get great bang for buck.
I'm still paying the 10$ GH copilot but I don't use it because :
Just these alone are not worth saving the 60$/month for me.I like the VSCode integration and the MCP/LSP usage surprised me sometimes over the dumb grep from CC. Ironically VSCode is becoming my terminal emulator of choice for all the CLI agents - SSH/container access and the automatic port mapping, etc. - it's more convenient than tmux sessions for me. So Copilot would be ideal for me but yeah it's just tweaked for being budget/broad scope tool rather than a tool for professionals that would pay to get work done.
You can use your GH subscription with a different harness. I'm using opencode with it, it turns GH into a pure token provider. The orchestration (compacting, etc.) is left to the harness.
It turns it into a very good value for money, as far as I'm concerned.
But you still get the reduced context-window.
But you still get charged per turn right ? I don't like that because it impacts my workflow. When I was last using it I would easily burn through the 10$ plan in two days just by iterating on plans interactively.
Honestly I'm not sure, I'm on my company's plan, I get a progress bar vaguely filling, but no idea of the costs or billing under the hood.
Disagree entirely.
GHCP at least is transparent about the pricing: hit enter on a prompt= one request. CC/Codex use some opaque quota scheme, where you never really know if a request will be 1,2,10% of your hourly max, let alone weekly max.
I've never seen much difference with context ostensibly being shorter in GHCP, all of the models (in any provider) lose the thread well before their window is full, and it seems that aggressive autocompaction is a pretty standard way to help with that, and CC/Codex do it frequently.
>I've never seen much difference with context ostensibly being shorter in GHCP, all of the models (in any provider) lose the thread well before their window is full, and it seems that aggressive autocompaction is a pretty standard way to help with that, and CC/Codex do it frequently.
Then we've had wildly different results. Running CC and GH copilot with Opus 4.6 on same task and the results out of CC were just better, likewise for Codex and GPT 5.4. I have to assume it's the aggressive context compaction/limited context loading because tracking what copilot does it seems to read way less context and then misses out on stuff other agents pick up automatically.
Is your source code worth only $40 for them to train their models on?
https://www.techradar.com/pro/bad-news-skeptics-github-says-...
Considering how much data they already have from everything that's on GitHub, I doubt you would make a dent boycotting their AI product.
And don't you think they're going to realize soon that it's also pretty good at "doing penetration testing" for your company when it's already trained on your company's source code?
It's already more than "pretty good": https://www.anthropic.com/glasswing
Google $20/mo plan has great usage for Claude Opus. Last time I used it, around Feb, it felt basically unlimited.
So, you basically tried it a century ago...
What providers offer nowadays coding plans, so no pricing per tokens, just api call limit and a monthly fee. Which are affordable?
I would suggest to explore paid plans on different providers. Much better value than plans bundled with editors or API based usage in openrouter. And Chinese companies have versions hosted in Singapore or US.
Also ditching Claude Code is mistake. It is quite capable model, and still great value. I would keep it, even if it's just for code reviews and planning. Anthropic allows pro plans use in Zed.
It should be noted about Openrouter that you aren't allowed to expose the access to end users, it has to be for internal usage only, which can be fatal as they have made waves of account banning lately (without warnings).
You are absolutely allowed to expose access to end users, as long as you continue to abide by terms of service. We have hundreds, if not thousands, of apps built on openrouter that in turn have end users of their own. We showcase many of them on our /apps ranking page!
TOS says: access the Site or Service for purposes of reselling API access to AI Models or otherwise developing a competing service;
So yes obviously you can do what you want as long as you abide by terms of service, but the terms of service does NOT allow you to resell the API.
> you aren't allowed to expose the access to end users, it has to be for internal usage only,
> TOS says: access the Site or Service for purposes of reselling API access to AI Models or otherwise developing a competing service;
I think what you meant is "you aren't allowed to expose the access to the API to end users", which is a fair condition IMHO.
You're still allowed to expose the functionality (ie. build a SaaS or AI assistant powered by OpenRouter API), just don't build a proxy.
I was actually wondering about this since I've seen like 3 comments talking about the same thing, would it happen to be related to money laundering due to the availability of the crypto payment method?
The comments are all from the same author.
OpenRouter recently started enforcing account-level regional restrictions for providers that enforce it (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) - ie blocking accounts that look like they are being used by users in China. The regional restriction used to be based on the Cloudflare edge worker IP's geolocation and enforced upstream, so a proxy/server running inside of supported regions would get around the geoblocks, but now OpenRouter are using (unspecified) signals like your billing address to geoblock. People say "banned" because the error message says "Author <provider> is banned", which really should be read as "Unable to use models from provider due to upstream ban".
Which further strengthen the fact that you can't do anything you want with API keys, even if you pay for them.
there is a huge gap between 'doing whatever you want' and 'illegal activities' as well as upstream restrictions (out of openrouters control)
What illegal activity? What another user pointed out about crypto isn't it, I'm talking about the fact that you can't open a service through Openrouter and charge your users per Token (aka "reselling" Openrouter), since when is this illegal?
I like and do use Zed but be aware functionality like Hooks is not supported for their integration with Claude Code, as a heavy user of Hooks I would stick with the terminal.
I'm always interested in how people use tools. I like to have a full editor to review code as a complement to the CLI and as I don't often use hooks the integration is also good enough for me.
1. What do you use the hooks for?
2. Do you use an editor alongside the CLI to review code or only examine the diffs?
When I use the tool ccusage it says I use $600 of usage a month for my $100. I don’t know that this is a good value proposition for me if I want to stay with the same model, half the reason I use Claude code, personally.
> Reallocating $100/Month Claude Code Spend
The new gimped claude code limits means my claude code spend the last month is $131. It cost me $20. I did an additional spend $5 on extra usage which cost me $5.
While VC's are setting fire to money I am going to warm my hands.
I think it is worth noting that “what they charge for api access” != “marginal cost of inference”. So I don’t think getting i.e. $40 of api usage for $20 would be insane. $131 for $20 does probably mean somebody is losing money though.
I ran this just now and for a small web-app I built I used over $50 in a single day. This was using superpowers plugin and almost exclusively coordinating through Opus. Could I get by with 100$ a month without the subscription? Maybe, but I pay for the convenience of just being able to throw Opus with lavish plugins at it (with 5h limits that are, in my opinion, pretty reasonable). I don't really WANT to have to think about when Haiku or Sonnet are enough.
If anything I would consider switching to OpenAI subscription (if I didn't despise them even more than Anthropic as a company), but converting to API use seems completely infeasible to me. I'd have to severely cut back on my use for not much benefit, other than having maybe an agent thats a little less jank than CC.
Depending on your workflow, in the spirit of reallocating $100/Month subscription, it may be worth dropping to the $20/Month plan (or equivalent at other providers) and then pay as you go on the (rare) occasions you "build a small web-app I built and used over $50 in a single day".
But at that point we are just min/maxing the details, and all I can say is if you are on a $100/$200 a month subscription to any of these services and not using them regularly then you shouldn't be on a $200 subscription any more than you should be on a $700 a month gym membership when you go every 3 months for 15 minutes.
Nah I get you, but for me personally, I do use CC a ton. It's building me so many useful internal tools right now, and deep research is also bootstrapping me into some new hobbies etc. I think I'm kind of in a rare-ish (maybe not so much on HN, but for the general population) spot where I'm not really trying to make some SaaS get quick rich scheme, but just directing CC to make apps that would take me a few days to make in a few hours, smoke test them, and solve a problem I had before. (e.g. photo tagging automation, MCP connections for personal services for documentation of chats or setting up todos, ansible playbooks for VMs, setting up data pipelines from external APIs for home automation...)
I deffo get more perceived value out of it than the 100$ I pay. Could I get MORE value with the same 100$? imo only through OpenAI (no harness lock in and more lenient limits), but I deeply dislike the way their company is evolving. Admittedly, recent launches from Anthropic like managed agents and Mythos Preview don't make me very hopeful the individual developer pricing is here to stay, but I'll use what I can get while I can get it.
Could I get my required value with less than 100$? Mayyybe I could get by with like, three Anthropic 20$ plans? or 2x20$ and an OAI 20$? but this is so min-maxy that I just don't really want to bother. Pay by token would kill my workflow instantly. I'd have to add so many steps for model selection alone. I'll cross that bridge when Anthropic cuts me off.
I agree though most people on the $200 plans are either just not using them or in some deep AI psychosis. I'd like to exclude myself from these groups, but the pipeline to AI psychosis seems very wishy washy to begin with (the thread the other day about iTunes charts being AI dominated had a surprising amount of people defending AI music, imo).
Our bank (a major retail bank in UK) is refusing doing business with OpenRouter and OpenRouter issued a refund which we did not request. So something is up. There is that.
I might be paranoid but I feel that access to models will become more constraint in the future as the industry gets more regulated.
I don't quite understand what you mean by something is up. Was the reason around security/telemetry or similar?
Bank refused to provide reasons - even after a formal complaint was raised with them.
We are not the only one. I found other people online experiencing the same issue. It is hard to tell how wide-spread this is but it is strange to say the least.
OpenRouter accepts crypto for payments. That should have raised some flags with banks.
I have had credits on open router that haven’t been deleted since near the projects launch, I believe 365 days is not a rule but rather a right reserved.
COO of OpenRouter here. Thats right — we haven’t done it to date but we can’t have unlimited liabilities stacking up forever. At some point we will start expiring credits from accounts that have seen zero activity in over a year.
Maybe a bad suggestion, but can you do an inactivity "fee" - 25% / year (min $5) or something similar. I like the pre-pay system everyone in Ai seems to have settled on, its better than the AWS bills that we all know and love.
What if I deposited $10, and have lots of recent activity on free models and have barely touched the $10 for payg models?
Thank you for taking the time to explain that - makes sense. I lifted what was present in your terms of service as I'd like to understand the minimum time I have.
In CA gift cards don’t expire and the industry does fine without having people buy expiring money.
This is how I do my coding, except for the tiny difference that I use PPQ.AI instead of OpenRouter because it's a bit cheaper.
Also, when you janandonly pay PPQ.AI rather than OpenRouter it seems to go into your pocket instead, so understandable it makes sense it gets cheaper for you. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Rather than trying to lie and get people to use your service, be honest what the upsides/downsides are, and only add your spam when it's at least a bit related, otherwise it just comes off as insincere when you're spamming your own platform in unrelated threads.
note: doesn't openrouter charge 5.5% fee?
You are absolutely correct, I was not aware of this. I will update the article accordingly and perhaps it's more worthwhile to stay solely on Cursor with the limited models.
Sadly Zed seems to add 10% so it's still more worthwhile to use OpenRouter.
I feel like a bit of an idiot because I didn’t know this either. I just assumed OR was another startup burning money to provide models at cost.
OpenRouter is a valuable service but I’ll probably try to run my own router going forward.
Come on at least write the Hackernews replies yourself.
I did. Perhaps too much consumption of AI responses but articles and engagement are written by me - a human.
That's exactly what a clanker would say. ^/s
Only the opening sentence has an AI smell; the rest is definitely written by a fleshy meatbag
I can't believe people are spending $100 a month on this! You're all mad!
When you consider the cross section of the tech community posting on HN, is it really that surprising?
It’s mad for sure, but I’d bet 99.9% of people spending money on AI aren’t spending their own hard earned sooo… “YOLO it’s a business expense/investment”…
I had a similar opinion a couple of years ago, content with more of an autocomplete.
Now I'm happy with agents as the models and harnesses have improved significantly but the token usage comes at a cost.
some are spending 100/day or even 1000/day. they must really be mad :)
Drunk on perceived power
Your ignorance is our opportunity :)