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Reallocating $100/Month Claude Code Spend to Zed and OpenRouter

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Re: Reallocating $100/Month Claude Code Spend to Zed and OpenRouter

#241

Post by mabunday »

Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #204
extr wrote: post #109

I think you are kidding if you think you are going to be remotely approximately the quantity/quality of output you get from a $100/max sub with Zed/Openrouter. I easily get $1K+ of usage out of my $100 max sub. And that's with Opus 4.6 on high thinking.

Out of curiosity, how many tokens are people using? I checked my openrouter activity - I used about 550 million tokens in the last month, 320M with Gemini and 240M with Opus. This cost me $600 in the past 30 days. $200 on Gemini, $400 on Opus.

  My Claude Code usage stats after ~3 months of heavy use:

    Favorite model: Opus 4.6          Total tokens: 42.6m
    Sessions: 420                     Longest session: 10d 2h 13m
    Active days: 53/95                Longest streak: 16 days
    Most active day: Feb 9            Current streak: 4 days

    ~158x more tokens than Moby-Dick

  Monthly breakdown via claude-code-monitor (not sure how accurate this is):

    Month     Total Tokens     Cost (USD)
    2026-01     96,166,569       $112.66
    2026-02    340,158,917       $393.44
    2026-03  2,183,154,148     $3,794.51
    2026-04  1,832,917,712     $3,412.72
    ─────────────────────────────────────
    Total    4,452,397,346     $7,713.34

Re: Reallocating $100/Month Claude Code Spend to Zed and OpenRouter

#242

Post by blazarquasar »

cobertos wrote: post #108
therealpygon wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you in certain circumstances, but not really for internal user inference. OpenRouter is great if you need to maintain uptime, but for basic usage (chat/coding/self-agents) you can do all of what you mentioned and more with a LiteLLM instance. The number of companies that send a bill is rarely a concern when it comes to “is work getting done”, but I agree with you that minimizing user friction is best. Fo…

Does OpenRouter perform better than LiteLLM on integration though? I found using Anthropic's models through a LiteLLM-laundered OpenAI-style API to perform noticably worse than using Anthropic's API directly. So I've scrapped considering LiteLLM as an option. It's also just a buggy mess from trying to use their MCP server. The errors it puts out are meaningless, and the UI behaves oddly even in the happy path (error…

OpenRouter performs much, much better than LiteLLM proxy. In my experience, if OpenRouter offers a model, the API will be supported. They also often have inference providers available that will perform much better than the default provider. Just as an example, Z.ai is sitting at around 10 token/s for GLM 5.1 while friendly is doing 70 token/s for the same model through OpenRouter.

LiteLLM proxy also adds quite some overhead as well.

I have personally settled on a mix of Bifrost as my router which connects to OpenRouter or some other providers that I deem more privacy friendly.

Re: Reallocating $100/Month Claude Code Spend to Zed and OpenRouter

#243

Post by chris_ivester »

chatmasta wrote: post #213
hayd wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

had been using claude max/opus with pi and the results have been incredible. Having pi write an AGENTS.md and dip your feet into creating your own skills specific to the project. With the anthropic billing change (not being able to use the max credits for pi) I think I have to cancel - as I'm whirring through credits now. Going to move to the $250/mo OpenAI codex plan for now.

Regardless of which harness you use, asking your agent to self-edit its own .claude (and to put it in the repo itself so you see the changes) is the single biggest impact change you can make in terms of compounding improvement. Couple this with telling it to create skills for /garden (clean up drift based on what changed this session), /handoff (garden, create ant skills to resolve friction encountered this session,…

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Re: Reallocating $100/Month Claude Code Spend to Zed and OpenRouter

#245

Post by vanillameow »

sandos wrote: post #238
vanillameow wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ran this just now and for a small web-app I built I used over $50 in a single day. This was using superpowers plugin and almost exclusively coordinating through Opus. Could I get by with 100$ a month without the subscription? Maybe, but I pay for the convenience of just being able to throw Opus with lavish plugins at it (with 5h limits that are, in my opinion, pretty reasonable). I don't really WANT to have to thin…

I dont understand how CC can burn that much money. Iv'e built many webapps using copilot, and our normal business tokens rarely run out. I would say Ive never exceeded 150% of a normal months tokens.

I think Opus is just an expensive model on API, especially without context management. A single message with near full context (I think this was still on 250k as well) costs like 1$ or something like that iirc.

Imo this is the premium I pay right now to just not have to worry about this. The project where I burned 50$ in a day was using superpowers plugin (A set of skills that makes Claude meticulously plan out design and implementation, interview for details, use subagents for subtasks and review them independently, etc.) - it burns tokens like crazy, but it has super good results for me for custom software tools for myself.

I would probably change my approach if I a) was creating software for customers where I had to actually worry about the implementation details or b) if I was forced to switch to API and couldn't just throw Opus at a 28-task plan for an hour. But this works for me right now so meh. I feel like I'm in some rare Goldilocks zone where Anthropic is not super ripping me off (I use CC quite heavily and generate real value for myself) but I also don't go crazy if I go 2 days without building the next SaaS startup.

Re: Reallocating $100/Month Claude Code Spend to Zed and OpenRouter

#246

Post by abdusco »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #176
wiether wrote: post #13

People may feel differently about the fee that OpenRouter takes, but I think the service they provide is worth the extra cost. Having access to dozens of models through a single API key, tracking cost of each request, being able to run the same request on different models and comparing their results next to each other, separating usages through different API keys, adding your own presets, setting your routing rules..…

You can get the same with kilo gateway without the fee.

If you want to try a model quickly, you'll have to pay the original provider at least 5 USD. With OpenRouter, you can pay pennies. If you decide it's not for you, then you don't have to leave the rest of your deposit with the provider.

Re: Reallocating $100/Month Claude Code Spend to Zed and OpenRouter

#248

Post by cat_plus_plus »

I just got MiniMax $200/year token plan. Usually it works fine for daily coding, if it gets stuck I pay for some Claude API calls through Roo gateway. Unlike other plans, this one officially supports running OpenClaw or other API workflows and doesn't suspend you long term if you use too many tokens, just set rate per few hours.

Re: Reallocating $100/Month Claude Code Spend to Zed and OpenRouter

#249

Post by hypercube33 »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #207
alexjplant wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For personal use I've noticed Claude (via the web-based chat UI) making really bizarre mistakes lately like ignoring input or making completely random assumptions. At work Claude Code has turned into an absolute dog. It fails to follow instructions and builds stuff like a lazy junior developer without any architecture, tests, or verification. This is even with max effort, Opus 4.6, multiple agents, early compaction,…

I've noticed the same thing, and even done side by side tests where I compare Claude Code with Cursor both running Opus 4.6. It seems Cursor somehow builds a better contextual description of the workspace, so the model knows what I'm actually trying to achieve. The problem is that with Cursor I'm paying per-token, so as GP suggested you can easily spend $100+ per month vs $20 on Claude Code.

I saw this immediately with 4.6 and dumped back to 4.5 because I actually asked it wtf it was doing and it's response was "being lazy"

Re: Reallocating $100/Month Claude Code Spend to Zed and OpenRouter

#250

Post by hypercube33 »

fishgoesblub wrote: post #172
supernes wrote: post #22

On the topic of Zed itself as a VSCode replacement - my experience is mixed. I loved it at first, but with time the papercuts add up. The responsiveness difference isn't that big on my system, but Zed's memory usage (with the TS language server in particular) is scandalous. As far as DX goes it's probably at 85% of the level VSCode provides, but in this space QoL features matter a lot. Oh, and it still can't render e…

I've been attempting to use Zed as a VSCode replacement but between the lack of bitmap font support (Criminal in an alleged code editor), and the weird UI choices, it's been hard. I want to love it, but what is "performance" if I have to spend more time working around the UI and lack of features from extensions. Strangest issue I've encountered is the colours being completely wrong when using Wayland.. colours are pe…

Question since I'm currently digging through fonts trying to find one my eyes like...what's your preference?
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