[NortySpock]

I made an account on OpenRouter.ai , created an API key, plugged the API key into the Zed editor, and started asking free models questions about my codebase.

Once I felt I had some confidence on what the spend rate would be, I bought $20 USD worth of credits and would occasionally point my editor at a cheap paid model for some real-time questions.

I've still only spent less than $2 in credits so far, as often a free model can answer my question fast enough.

I have not yet tried agentic coding, but at least with OpenRouter API keys it's trivial to cost-cap keys so you can pay for lower latency and still cap your spending.