alt Hacker NewsThe era of subsidization is over, it seems.
For my money, on the code side at least, GitHub Copilot on VSCode is still the most cost effective option, 10 bucks for 300 requests gets me all I need, especially when I use OpenAI models which are counted as 1x vs Opus which is 3x. I've stopped using all other tools like Claude Code etc.
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In general I view VS Code and VS.NET Community + SQL Server free universe as the most effective option :) I think these products are great actually.
I tried Claude Code for a week straight recently to see what all the hype was about and while it pumped out a bunch of reasonable looking code and features I ended up feeling completely disconnected from my codebase and uncomfortable.
Cancelled the plan I had with them and happily went back to just coding like normal in VSCode with occasional dips into Copilot when a need arose or for rubber ducking and planning. Feels much better as I'm in full control and not trusting the magic black box to get it right or getting fatigue from reading thousands of lines of generated code.
Anyone who says they're able to review thousands of lines effectively that Claude might slop out in a day are lying to themselves.
> The era of subsidization is over
Of course it is. Returns are diminishing, AGI isn't happening with current techniques but it is good enough to sell, so it's time to monetize. I just got an email from OpenAI as well about ads in their free tier (I signed up once out of curiosity).
Pro used to be $200.
I use both GH Copilot as well as CC extensively and it does seem more economical, though I wonder how long this will last as I imagine Github has also been subsidizing LLM usage extensively.
FWIW it feels like GH Copilot is a cheaper version of OpenRouter but with trade-offs like being locked into VSCode and the Microsoft ecosystem overall. I already use VSCode though and otherwise I don't see much downside to using GH Copilot outside of that.