> tried Kimi K3 on a task I've done with every other model I use regularly and found it chewed a lot longer on the problem and ate up almost the entirety of a 5 hour usage limit on their $19 plan

ArtificialAnalysis puts Kimi K3 just below DeepSeek v4 & GLM 5.2 in token use per task, which is about 2x to 3x more tokens than Grok 4.5: https://x.com/ArtificialAnlys/status/2077832879187620192 / https://archive.vn/zBbFi 2 other open weights MiMo v2.5 & MiniMax M3 are comparatively thrifty.

> Subscription usage limits are hard to measure as none of the providers tell you directly what it means in terms of tokens or anything else you can easily compare

I always put my coding subscriptions (that allow it) through "AI gateways" (Cloudflare & OpenRouter are free) which help track token use.

In my experience, Kimi & Qwen Cloud have opaque & restrictive limits, their "credits" drain faster. I now make it a point of subscribing (directly [0]) with providers that are transparent like MiniMax, DeepSeek, Xiaomi, & Z.ai.

[0] OpenCode Go, Cline, and AtlasCloud have generous limits for open weights, otherwise.