Assuming you pay per token, which seems like a really strange workflow to lock yourself into at this point. Neither paid monthly plans nor local models suffer from that issue.
I tried once to use APIs for agents but seeing a counter of money go up and eventually landing at like $20 for one change, made it really hard to justify. I'd rather pay $200/month before I'd be OK with that sort of experience.
The $20-per-change problem is a workflow problem, not a pricing problem. Batching work into larger well-scoped sessions rather than interactive back-and-forth changes the unit economics significantly. Most people use these tools like a terminal — one command at a time — which is the worst possible cost profile.
It's absolutely a pricing problem. I use claude code in both of those ways and neither is more valid than the other it just depends what you are working on. You should not avoid back and forth with the agent just because you think it might cost more. Also due to prompt caching it doesn't even cost that much compared to large changes like you are talking about.
Yes I use the $200 per month plan for Claude Code and it's amazing
I assume the usage varies based on prompt caching, but I could be wrong. Why would you assume prompt caching would have zero effect on the subscription usage?
Assuming you pay per token, which seems like a really strange workflow to lock yourself into at this point. Neither paid monthly plans nor local models suffer from that issue.
I tried once to use APIs for agents but seeing a counter of money go up and eventually landing at like $20 for one change, made it really hard to justify. I'd rather pay $200/month before I'd be OK with that sort of experience.