Does anyone actually pay API costs out of their own pocket? It's about 10x cheaper to just get a codex or chat gpt subscription, it's so heavily subsidized compared to the API that I'm sure it would be cheaper to use frontier models on a subscription plan rather than paying API prices for deepseek flash.
I do, but via OpenRouter. Outside of work my use cases are small and cheaper models do great job at those. I noticed even if I "burn tokens like crazy" I still pay less than any subscription available (a few $ a month).
But I guess if I had an agent vibecoding on it's own, I'd go with subscription instantly.
jrflo · · focus · HN ↗
szszrk · · focus · HN ↗
But I guess if I had an agent vibecoding on it's own, I'd go with subscription instantly.