I do. For local dev work, I'm mostly using jetbrains' Junie, I can swap between a collection of models from google, openai, anthrophic.

I've had more than a few people tell me "oh, it's so much cheaper to use a $20 claude account" or "i've never hit a limit ever using my openai". Inevitably.. I end up reading/hearing "oh, I need to give it another couple hours to start using it again"... I've never hit that with my approach, even if it's costing me a bit more. Being able to work when I want when I have time has some value.

I also have openai and anthropic direct API billing set up for hosted and client projects that need to call out to an LLM service.

I do, 3-4$ a month of deep seek is enough for my usage

I pay $100 for Codex and it last about a day in the weekly limit - mostly Astra and Sol.

Then i got $20 into DeepSeek and i've been using those $20 for two weeks every day now. Use case is automating computer/browser use - Astra is really good at it, but very expensive, Sol and Luna haven't been that great at it, Deepseek as at about 80% of Astra but lasts forever.

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.

I use local LLMs on my Mac Mini.

Otherwise DeepSeek Flash 4.1 is dirt cheap (other "Flash" models are not that expensive either). I pay (very few dollars) out of my own pocket.

There are many things where having an API Key is necessary.

Maybe I’ve missed the boat though: is there now a method to use an api key to access a subscription?

Large enterprises pay per token even through a ChatGPT “membership”, for example.

>heavily subsidized

Do you think this will be a problem in the future?