| ▲ | zuzululu 4 hours ago |
| Great article I know this upsets a lot of people who are used to thinking Anthropic/OpenAI are just lighting cash on fire but they've cornered the market on enterprise who cannot walk away from these $200/month plans However the valuations are still far far away from actual sanity |
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| ▲ | binary0010 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Have you tried the large open source code models? I use glm-5.1 and occasionally deep seek v4. They are as good or better than Claude's latest models. And significantly cheaper. I've converted 3 of my engineer friends as well. All three have dropped their $200 month plans they had with anthropic. We've all been a bit shocked at just how good these models are now. If you "have" tried GLM (I specifically find it shockingly good for code).
Did you not think it's not competitive to Claude, and why? |
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| ▲ | BeetleB 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I use GLM-5.1. It's good enough for personal stuff. It doesn't compare to the latest Opus I use at work. You can certainly argue I don't need Opus for work, but there is clearly a difference. Also, at least with z.ai, GLM-5.1 is s l o w! After using Claude at work, I get really impatient with GLM-5.1 at home. When doing "true" vibe coding (i.e. not really examining the code), Opus is a ton faster (easily 5x). But yeah, I'm not willing to personally pay for the frontier models. I won't even renew my annual Z.ai plan - it's become too expensive. | | |
| ▲ | binary0010 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Hmm, I use opencode subscription, and glm seems just as fast from the tests I've tried to compare between the two. Tbh it mostly took Claude longer (mostly significantly longer) for the same tests. Also, and I know you may not want to answer. But could you give me an idea of the type of thing you found glm to be worse with? I think I've been fairly unbiased in testing a bunch of different development tasks. But am curious if maybe it performs well for some stuff and not others. So if you could share what you feel it's worse at. Also are you an experienced developer or less experience? | | | |
| ▲ | cassianoleal 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I'll repeat something I wrote on an entirely separate HN submission. When DeepSeek V4 Pro came out, I had been mostly coding with GLM-5.1 on a Z.ai coding plan. I had a large analysis task on a relatively complex codebase. I decided to try the models out. GLM-5.1 did acceptably but got a few things wrong (easily corrected) and took quite a while to get there. Opus 4.6 burnt through the US$10 budget I had given it in about 10-15 min, without ever returning from the first prompt. DeepSeek V4 returned a full analysis within 2-3 min, and I carried on all the way to implementing the feature I was after. Total cost less than US$1.00. I now mostly alternate between GLM-5.1 and DeepSeek V4 Flash, with an occasional dip into V4 Pro for more complex analyses. | |
| ▲ | dominotw 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | task i am working on right now at work is comparing two verisions of apis and documenting responses in their outputs. i suspect a vast majority of work at entrprise is of similar complexity. right now everyone is using latest and greatest to do dumb stuff like that. that would change fast if companies start caring about costs. |
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| ▲ | therealdrag0 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | What is the best IDE UI to use them? I don’t like CLIs. | | |
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| ▲ | thewebguyd 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > enterprise who cannot walk away from these $200/month plans Any org with more than 150 users aren't on $200/month plans, they are forced into API pricing + $20/month/user For individuals and orgs small enough to get to use the subscription plans, that's all well and good until usage limits keep going down, or cost goes up. If you compare the usage you get on $200/month maxed out vs. what that would cost at API pricing, the $200/mont plan is an absolute steal. I doubt it will last long. |
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| ▲ | bigbuppo 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Not to mention the API plans are also still in their "lose money, just get the suckers hooked like addicts" phase. Once the reality-based pricing comes into play, it's a coin flip of whether the bulk of the companies fail, or they get to live off government subsidies for a few decades. On the plus side, I'm happy I'll have a nice hay barn when the local half-built AI data center is abandoned. | | |
| ▲ | simonw 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I believe that API pricing runs at a healthy margin, at least compared to the server and energy costs used to serve the tokens. Recent conversation here on that topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47062534#47063134 | | |
| ▲ | bigbuppo 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | There isn't a single thing about how the AI companies are operating that looks like a normal business. I know people who were in the room when Scott Sullivan, CFO of Worldcom, assured everyone that the future was bright at Worldcom days before they collapsed. So you'll have to excuse me if I don't believe the words of someone whose sole job is to justify hundreds of billions of dollars being thrown at Anthropic when he says their future is bright. | | |
| ▲ | simonw 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I agree that the amount of investment thrown at these companies is absurd. But I also think that their API token pricing represents a real margin over the inference costs for serving those tokens. Both things can be true at once. |
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| ▲ | smallerfish 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > enterprise who cannot walk away from these $200/month plans But that's the point of the article. Enterprise plans are starting to get API pricing, not the subsidized subscription pricing. |
