[strangescript]

Claude Code still feels superior. o4-mini has all sorts of issues. o3 is better but at that point, you aren't saving money so who cares.

I feel like people are sleeping on Claude Code for one reason or another. Its not cheap, but its by far the best, most consistent experience I have had.

[artdigital]

Claude Code is just way too expensive.

These days I’m using Amazon Q Pro on the CLI. Very similar experience to Claude Code minus a few batteries. But it’s capped at $20/mo and won’t set my credit card on fire.

[aitchnyu]

Is it using one of these models? https://openrouter.ai/models?q=amazon

Seems 4x costlier than my Aider+Openrouter. Since I'm less about vibes or huge refactoring, my (first and only) bill is <5 usd with Gemini. These models will halve that.

[artdigital]

No, Amazon Q is using Amazon Q. You can't change the model, it's calling itself "Q" and it's capped to $20 (Q Developer Pro plan). There is also a free tier available - https://aws.amazon.com/q/developer/

It's very much a "Claude Code" in the sense that you have a "q chat" command line command that can do everything from changing files, running shell commands, reading and researching, etc. So I can say "q chat" and then tell it "read this repo and create a README" or whatever else Claude Code can do. It does everything by itself in an agentic way. (I didn't want to say like 'Aider' because the entire appeal of Claude Code is that it does everything itself, like figuring out what files to read/change)

(It's calling itself Q but from my testing it's pretty clear that it's a variant of Claude hosted through AWS which makes sense considering how much money Amazon pumped into Anthropic)

[dingnuts]

> the entire appeal of Claude Code is that it does everything itself, like figuring out what files to read/change

how is this appealing? I think I must be getting old because the idea of letting a language model run wild and run commands on my system -- that's unsanitized input! --horrifies me! What do you mean just let it change random files??

I'm going to have to learn a new trade, IDK

[winrid]

It shows you the diff and you confirm it, asks you before running commands, and doesn't allow accessing files outside the current dir. You can also tell it to not ask again and let it go wild, I've built full features this way and then just go through and clean it up a bit after.

[hmottestad]

In the OpenAI demo of codex they said that it’s sandboxed.

It only has access to files within the directory it’s run from, even if it calls tools that could theoretically access files anywhere on your system. Also had networking blocked, also in a sandboxes fashion so that things like curl don’t work either.

I wasn’t particularly impressed with my short test of Codex yesterday. Just the fact that it managed to make any decent changes at all was good, but when it messed up the code it took a long time and a lot of tokens to figure out.

I think we need fine tuned models that are good at different tasks. A specific fine tune for fixing syntax errors in Java would be a good start.

In general it also needs to be more proactive in writing and running tests.

[aitchnyu]

I felt Sonnet 3.7 would cost at least $30 a month for light use. Did they figure out a way to offer it cheaper?

[nmcfarl]

I don’t know what Amazon did - but I use Aider+Openrouter with Gemini 2.5 pro and it cost 1/6 of what sonnet 3.7 does. The aider leaderboard https://aider.chat/docs/leaderboards/ - includes relative pricing theses days.

[monsieurbanana]

> Upgrade apps in a fraction of the time with the Amazon Q Developer Agent for code transformation (limit 4,000 lines of submitted code per month)

4k loc per month seems terribly low? Any request I make could easily go over that. I feel like I'm completely misunderstanding (their fault though) what they actually meant.

Edit: No I don't think I'm misunderstanding, if you want to go over this they direct you to a pay-per-request plan and you are not capped at $20 anymore

[artdigital]

You are confusing Amazon Q in the editor (like "transform"), and Amazon Q on the CLI. The editor thing has some stuff that costs extra after exceeding the limit, but the CLI tool (that acts similar to Claude Code) is a separate feature that doesn't have this restriction. See https://aws.amazon.com/q/developer/pricing/?p=qdev&z=subnav&..., under "Console" see "Chat". The list is pretty accurate with what's "included" and what costs extra.

I've been running this almost daily for the past months without any issues or extra cost. Still just paying $20

[monsieurbanana]

I see, thanks. The 4k limit for the gui still seems so low, but I might try the cli sometime.

[artdigital]

Do try! The free tier doesn't cost anything and is enough to tinker around with. You don't even need an AWS account for it, it'll prompt you to create a new separate account specifically for Q

[ekabod]

"gemini 2.5 pro exp" is superior to Claude Sonnet 3.7 when I use it with Aider [1]. And it is free (with some high limit).

[1]https://aider.chat/

[razemio]

Compared to cline aider had no chance, the last time I tried it (4 month ago). Has it really changed? Always thought cline is superior because it focuses on sonnet with all its bells an whistles. While aider tries to be an universal ide coding agent which works well with all models.

When I try gemmini 2.5 pro exp with cline it does very well but often fails to use the tools provided by cline which makes it way less expensive while failing random basic tasks sonnet does in its sleep. I pay the extra to save the time.

Do not get me wrong. Maybe I am totally outdated with my opinion. It is hard to keep up these days.

[ekabod]

I tried Cline, but I work faster using the command line style of Aider. Having the /run command to execute a script and having the console content added to the prompt, makes fixing bugs very fast.

[mstipetic]

It has multiple edit modes, you have to pair them up properly

[jacooper]

Don't they train on your inputs if you use the free Ai studio api key?

[asadm]

speaking for myself, I am happy to make that trade. As long as I get unrestricted access to latest one. Heck, most of my code now is written by gemini anyway haha.

[strangescript]

I would use Aider if it had an agent mode. It needs to catch up with UX, frankly just have a mode that copies what claude code does.

[Aeolun]

> Its not cheap, but its by far the best, most consistent experience I have had.

It’s too expensive for what it does though. And it starts failing rapidly when it exhausts the context window.

[jasonjmcghee]

If you get a hang of controlling costs, it's much cheaper. If you're exhausting the context window, I'm not surprised you're seeing high cost.

Be aware of the "cache".

Tell it to read specific files, never use /compact (that'll bust cache, if you need to, you're going back and forth too much or using too many files at once).

Never edit files manually during a session (that'll bust cache). THIS INCLUDES LINT.

Have a clear goal in mind and keep sessions to as few messages as possible.

Write / generate markdown files with needed documentation using claude.ai, and save those as files in the repo and tell it to read that file as part of a question.

I'm at about ~$0.5-0.75 for most "tasks" I give it. I'm not a super heavy user, but it definitely helps me (it's like having a super focused smart intern that makes dumb mistakes).

If i need to feed it a ton of docs etc. for some task, it'll be more in the few $, rather than < $1. But I really only do this to try some prototype with a library claude doesn't know about (or is outdated).

For hobby stuff, it adds up - totally.

For a company, massively worth it. Insanely cheap productivity boost (if developers are responsible / don't get lazy / don't misuse it).

[Implicated]

I keep seeing this sentiment and it's wild to me.

Sure, it might cost a few dollars here and there. But what I've personally been getting from it, for that cost, is so far away from "expensive" it's laughable.

Not only does it do things I don't want to do, in a _super_ efficient manner. It does things I don't know how to do - contextually, within my own project, such that when it's done I _do_ know how to do it.

Like others have said - if you're exhausting the context window, the problem is you, not the tool.

Example, I have a project where I've been particularly lazy and there's a handful of models that are _huge_. I know better than to have Claude read those models into context - that would be stupid. Rather - I tell it specifically what I want to do within those models, give it specific method names and tell it not to read the whole file, rather search for and read the area around the method definition.

If you _do_ need it to work with very large files - they probably shouldn't be that large and you're likely better off refactoring those files (with Claude, of course) to abstract out where you can and reduce the line count. Or, if anything, literally just temporarily remove a bunch of code from the huge files that isn't relevant to the task so that when it reads it it doesn't have to pull all of that into context. (ie: Copy/paste the file into a backup location, delete a bunch of unrelated stuff in the working file, do your work with claude then 'merge' the changes to the backup file and copy it back)

If a few dollars here and there for getting tasks done is "too expensive" you're using it wrong. The amount of time I'm saving for those dollars is worth many times the cost and the number of times that I've gotten unsatisfactory results from that spending has been less than 5.

I see the same replies to these same complaints everywhere - people complaining about how it's too expensive or becomes useless with a full context. Those replies all state the same thing - if you're filling the context, you've already screwed it up. (And also, that's why it's so expensive)

I'll agree with sibling commenters - have claude build documentation within the project as you go. Try to keep tasks silo'd - get in, get the thing done, document it and get out. Start a new task. (This is dependent on context - if you have to load up the context to get the task done, you're incentivized to keep going rather than dump and reload with a new task/session, thus paying the context tax again - but you also are going to get less great results... so, lesson here... minimize context.)

100% of the time that I've gotten bad results/gone in circles/gotten hallucinations was when I loaded up the context or got lazy and didn't want to start new sessions after finishing a task and just kept moving into new tasks. If I even _see_ that little indicator on the bottom right about how much context is available before auto-compact I know I'm getting less-good functionality and I need to be careful about what I even trust it's saying.

It's not going to build your entire app in a single session/context window. Cut down your tasks into smaller pieces, be concise.

It's a skill problem. Not the tool.

[someothherguyy]

How can it be a skill problem when the tool itself is sold as being skilled?

[mirsadm]

You're using it wrong, you're using the wrong version etc etc insert all the excuses how it's never the tool but the users fault.

[Implicated]

If this is truly your perspective, you've already lost the plot.

It's almost always the users fault when it comes to tools. If you're using it and it's not doing its 'job' well - it's more likely that you're using it wrong than it is that it's a bad tool. Almost universally.

Right tool for the job, etc etc. Also important that you're using it right, for the right job.

Claude Code isn't meant to refactor entire projects. If you're trying to load up 100k token "whole projects" into it - you're using it wrong. Just a fact. That's not what this tool is designed to do. Sure.. maybe it "works" or gets close enough to make people think that is what it's designed for, but it's not.

Detailed, specific work... it excels, so wildly, that it's astonishing to me that these takes exist.

In saying all of that, there _are_ times I dump huge amounts of context into it (Claude, projects, not Claude Code - cause that's not what it's designed for) and I don't have "conversations" with it in that manner. I load it up with a bunch of context, ask my question/give it a task and that first response is all you need. If it doesn't solve your concern, it should shine enough light that you now know how you want to address it in a more granular fashion.

[troupo]

The unpredictable non-deterministic black box with an unknown training set, weights and biases is behaving contrary to how it's advertised? The fault lies with the user, surely.

[mwigdahl]

A junior developer is skilled too, but still requires a senior’s guidance to keep them focused and on track. Just because a tool has built in intelligence doesn’t mean it can read your intentions from nothing if you fail to communicate to it well.

[Implicated]

Serious question?

Is it a tool problem or a skill problem when a surgeon doesn't know how to use a robotic surgery assistant/robot?

[troupo]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43714059

[threecheese]

How can one develop this skill via trial and error if the cost is unknowably high? Before reasoning, it was less important when tokens are cheap, but mixing models, some models being expensive to use, and reasoning blowing up the cost, having to pay even five bucks to make a mistake sure makes the cost seem higher than the value. A little predictability here would go a long way in growing the use of these capabilities, and so one should wonder why cost predictability doesn’t seem to be important to the vendors - maybe the value isn’t there, or is only there for the select few that can intuit how to use the tech effectively.

[afletcher]

Thanks for sharing. Are you able to control the context when using Claude Code, or are you using other tools that give you greater control over what context to provide? I haven't used Claude Code enough to understand how smart it is at deciding what context to load itself and if you can/need to explicitly manage it yourself.

[disqard]

This comment echoes my own experience with Claude. Especially the advice about only pulling in the context you need.

I'm a paying customer and I know my time is sufficiently valuable that this kind of technology pays for itself.

As an analogy, I liken it to a scribe (author's assistant).

Your comment has lots of useful hints -- thanks for taking the time to write them up!

[Implicated]

I like the scribe analogy. And, just like a scribe, my primary complaint with claude code isn't the cost or the context - but the speed. It's just so slow :D

[siva7]

True. Matches my experience. It takes much effort to get really proficient with ai. It's like learning to ride a wild horse. Your senior dev skills will sure come handy in this ride but don't expect it to work like some google query

[Aeolun]

> It's not going to build your entire app in a single session/context window.

I mean, it was. Right up until it exhausted the context window. Then it suddenly required hand holding.

If I wanted to do that I might as well use Cursor.