DeekSeek did a strategic b2c mistake. It is always easier to start with higher prices and give discounts than go opposite way (=raise).

But people get used to higher prices. Or they churn out.

For hobby projects there can be local or free models. There are also some caching techniques.

Yeah, they onboarded A LOT of folks with that original pricing and quality. It was "good enough" for most use-cases, like many, I work in existing code-bases and do a lot of "multi-file" edits, that aren't hard to do technically, just take a lot of time and must be done precisely enough. For that, it was perfect.

I wonder how many people will stay, there's still a huge void in alternatives on that original pricing.