alt Hacker NewsOpus 5.5 is according to AA cost per task, 23x more expensive than Deepseek with max effort (which is dumb, you shouldn't use) and 13x more expensive on xhigh.
Claude sub has a 60x subsidy, so a $20 sub gives you $1200 in API.
Based on this math, Claude sub is a much better deal than Deepseek. And it's a stronger model of course.
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I pay API rates via OpenRouter / Fireworks, and I find it challenging to hit the $20 mark.
If I was to do anywhere near that kind of work on Anthropic, I'd find myself running out of tokens, waiting days to continue working, and leaning on their el-crap models to try to avoid running out again. This happens all the time.
This way I get to leverage DS for nearly all my work, benefit from its far superior latencies, and I still get to lean on OpenAPI / Anthropic or whatever SOTA models I want when I need them.
The only time that really falls down is if I'm doing huge amounts of real novel work, which hasn't been the case for a while.
I don't like the feeling of being watched, which unfortunately rules out the AI subscriptions for me.
For some reason it just creeps me out knowing that someone is recording me and reading my conversations.
Isn't a Claude subscription limited to non work / small side projects though? Being regularly rate limited has a major impact on productivity
He is trying to be faster than his friends, not the bear.
Just because anthropic charges absurd consumer API prices, doesn't mean their subscription is a 'subsidy' lmao.
I'm a heavy Claude/anthropic user, I max out my 20x max plan in 1-2 days at this point. The OpenCode Go $40 plan with DeepSeek flash is like 2x the value of the Claude max 20x plan for how much I actually get out of it, for 1/5 the price.
DeepSeek literally like 10x better value than Claude/Anthropic.
Except you get hamstrung by quotas. Which is a pain in the ass, and a massive waste of time.
> Claude sub has a 60x subsidy, so a $20 sub gives you $1200 in API.
This is only true if you max out the plan, which requires working around awkward 5-hour and weekly limits. For side projects, sure, you can use a Ralph loop or whatever and just continue when the window resets. For work, I can't afford to simply stop working when I hit my limit. And using Claude at API prices is prohibitively expensive.
Personally, I have a $20/month OpenAI subscription that I supplement with DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (currently using CoralBricks as the provider since it's fast and I'm grandfathered into their $0 cache read pricing). It's working out rather well so far. Even when I use DS all day as my primary model, I only pay about $1/day, which is roughly equivalent to what I pay for the sub anyway (but with no limits).