Comment by epiccoleman

I am currently subscribed to Claude Pro, which is $20/mo and gives you plenty to experiment with by giving you access to Projects and MCP in Claude Desktop and also Claude Code for a flat monthly fee. (I think there are usage limits but I haven't hit them).

I've probably fed $100 in API tokens into the OpenAI and Anthropic consoles over the last two years or so.

I was subscribed to Cursor for a while too, though I'm kinda souring on it and looking at other options.

At one point I had a ChatGPT pro sub, I have found Claude more valuable lately. Same goes for Gemini, I think it's pretty good but I haven't felt compelled to pay for it.

I guess my overall point is you don't have to break the bank to try this stuff out. Shell out the $20 for a month, cancel immediately, and if you miss it when it expires, resub. $20 is frankly a very low bar to clear - if it's making me even 1% more productive, $20 is an easy win.