I have downgraded my Claude to the $20 one, and basically only use it for the web chat right now. For coding, I use DeepSeek @API Rates configured in Claude Code. I have spent around $4.8 for 320,000,000 tokens. I always felt like i was not using Claude plan, that i had to have the LLM working on something all the time to justify the price. Now with DeepSeek i don't think about it anymore. I don't feel bad when not using the subscription anymore, and i don't worry about limits as i just pay more. Where i really felt this was on running things in parallel as there are no hourly limits anymore!

Gemini changed their rate limits recently and I find the free plan is sufficient for any 'hard' problems that DeepSeek might have trouble with. The combination of the two has reduced my AI spend to $5/month. I agree that it's nice not to have to worry about maxing out your subscription - I'm not doing personal projects 24/7.

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