Comment by cmrdporcupine 2 days ago
Try what I've done: use the Claude Code tool but point your ANTHROPIC_URL at a DeepSeek API membership. It's like 1/10th the cost, and about 2/3rds the intelligence.
Sometimes I can't really tell.
I use this to proxy ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL to other models: https://github.com/ujisati/claude-code-provider-proxy
unfortunately it doesn't support local models but they're too slow for coding anyway.
I've used that too, but in DeepSeek's case they provide an Anthropic API compatible endpoint so you don't have to.
Or a 3rd party service like https://synthetic.new, of which I am an unaffiliated user.
So, Deepseek 3.1 from their own platform:
Input $0.28 / 1M tokens cache miss Output $0.42 / 1M tokens
Via synthetic (which otherwise looks cool):
Input $0.56/mtok Output $1.68/mtok
So 2-3 better value through https://platform.deepseek.com
(Granted Synthetic gives you way more models to choose from, including ones that don't parrot CPC/PLA propaganda and censor)
Also there is a fixed price Claude Code plan for GLM 4.6 from z.ai, I pay for the cheapest ($6/mo) as an alternate/fallback for Claude Code and Codex. I've been surprised by how similar in capabilities all three of them are, definitely not seeing a big CLI agent moat...
GLM is maybe slightly weaker on average but on the other hand it's also solved problems where both CC and Codex got stuck in endless failure loops so for the price it's nice to have in my back pocket. I also see some tool use failures sometimes that it always works around which I'm guessing are due to slight differences with Claude.
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