[andai]

I'm on the $20 plan with Claude. It's worth mentioning that Claude and Codex both support per token billing, if your usage is so light that $20 is not worth it.

But if you use them for more than a few minutes, the tokens start adding up, and the subscriptions are heavily discounted relative to the tokens used.

There are also API-neutral tools like Charm Crush which can be used with any AI provider with API keys, and work reasonably well (for simple tasks at least. If you're doing something bigger you will probably want to use Claude Code).

Although each AI appears to be "tailored" to the company's own coding tools, so you'll probably get better results "holding it right".

That being said, the $3/month Z.ai sub also works great in Claude Code, in my experience. It's a bit slower and dumber than actual Claude, so I just went for the real thing in the end. 60 cents a day is not so bad! That's like, 1/3 of my canned ice coffee... the greater cost is the mental atrophy I am now undergoing ;)