5 ms·

It pains me to read these answers so far. Listen, for 99%+ of your web and mobile tasks, deepseek-v4.1-flash is all you need. It is blazing fast, super cheap,

It pains me to read these answers so far. Listen, for 99%+ of your web and mobile tasks, deepseek-v4.1-flash is all you need. It is blazing fast, super cheap, and quite proficient. It acts responsibly, has top-notch vision for evaluating its own UI work, and is far less smug and flowery than any of the Anthropic models. For what it's worth, here's a take on its speed vs cost vs intelligence: https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/deepseek-v4-1-flash https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/deepseek-v4-1-flash I can go all day and night with this thing with multiple sessions going, and I spend like $2 per day retail. With opencode-go, that fits within the $10/mo subscription, so that's what it ends up costing in real life.

the__alchemist 4d ago
What pains you in particular? Any specific posts, trends, or tool choices here?
- montroser 4d ago
  It pains me to see so, so many dollars going to Anthropic. There is either massive inefficiency in there, or else its users are getting fleeced. In cost-per-task, it's a 32x multiple Fable vs DS41. Either it really does cost them more electricity/gpu, or else they are succeeding convincing the masses that Anthropic's models are necessary for everyday tasks, when this is truly just not the case. Either way seems a tragedy. Especially regrettable from my perspective, is the idea that to do computer programming in these modern times, you have to fork over an amount comparable to many people's monthly rent. Even if your employer is happy to direct their funds that way, we lose quite something when recreational coding comes with a substantial personal monetary cost. https://artificialanalysis.ai/#price-and-cost https://artificialanalysis.ai/#price-and-cost
  - cassianoleal 4d ago
    Another happy DS41 user here. When I talk to friends with Claude subscriptions, they're not doing anything more complicated or better than I am, but are paying through their noses.
    - prettyblocks 4d ago
      Do you use a 3rd party provider or use deepseek directly?
      - cassianoleal 4d ago
        DeepSeek. Every now and again I get a notification that I'm running out of credits. That means I've got less than US$5. I usually wait another week or 2 and top up another 10.
    - Obscurity4340 4d ago
      How do you get started with DS41?
  - the__alchemist 4d ago
    I wish my monthly rent were $20!
AaronAPU 4d ago
I pay $200 month and literally have never a single time run out of usage, for Codex + Pro chat. It is better than DeepSeek and at least it supports a US company. Your pain isn’t important to me.
- montroser 4d ago
  "Let them eat cake..." I'm glad that you have the luxury burn $200/mo. But that aside, it's not obvious to me that handing your pennies to an American company that is in cahoots with the American military, willing to self-censor at the direction of the American government, investing in large-scale raping of the planet to build new power plants data centers -- is better than handing your (20x fewer) pennies to a Chinese company who releases its models in the open, and is investing in efficiency so that we can run the same inference for a fraction of the resources.
  - AaronAPU 4d ago
    I think most of us when you start typing stuff like that just roll our eyes and get on with our day.
    - ricardobeat 4d ago
      No doubt, it’s a lot easier not to care.
  - Fizz43 4d ago
    You can make the same argument about China. They are producing so much Co2 its pushed the world past the point of no return. All the climate change policy in the world cant change anything because china took so long to begin addressing the issue. They started nearly a decade and a half later than they ought to. But yeah american datacenters are the problem here...
    - montroser 4d ago
      What you say is true about China and its global environmental impact. But, if you look at the net effect specifically of DeepSeek versus the net effect of Anthropic or OpenAI, where the investments are being made -- it's a different story.

the__alchemist 4d ago

What pains you in particular? Any specific posts, trends, or tool choices here?

montroser 4d ago
It pains me to see so, so many dollars going to Anthropic. There is either massive inefficiency in there, or else its users are getting fleeced. In cost-per-task, it's a 32x multiple Fable vs DS41. Either it really does cost them more electricity/gpu, or else they are succeeding convincing the masses that Anthropic's models are necessary for everyday tasks, when this is truly just not the case. Either way seems a tragedy. Especially regrettable from my perspective, is the idea that to do computer programming in these modern times, you have to fork over an amount comparable to many people's monthly rent. Even if your employer is happy to direct their funds that way, we lose quite something when recreational coding comes with a substantial personal monetary cost. https://artificialanalysis.ai/#price-and-cost https://artificialanalysis.ai/#price-and-cost
- cassianoleal 4d ago
  Another happy DS41 user here. When I talk to friends with Claude subscriptions, they're not doing anything more complicated or better than I am, but are paying through their noses.
  - prettyblocks 4d ago
    Do you use a 3rd party provider or use deepseek directly?
    - cassianoleal 4d ago
      DeepSeek. Every now and again I get a notification that I'm running out of credits. That means I've got less than US$5. I usually wait another week or 2 and top up another 10.
  - Obscurity4340 4d ago
    How do you get started with DS41?
- the__alchemist 4d ago
  I wish my monthly rent were $20!

AaronAPU 4d ago

I pay $200 month and literally have never a single time run out of usage, for Codex + Pro chat. It is better than DeepSeek and at least it supports a US company. Your pain isn’t important to me.

montroser 4d ago
"Let them eat cake..." I'm glad that you have the luxury burn $200/mo. But that aside, it's not obvious to me that handing your pennies to an American company that is in cahoots with the American military, willing to self-censor at the direction of the American government, investing in large-scale raping of the planet to build new power plants data centers -- is better than handing your (20x fewer) pennies to a Chinese company who releases its models in the open, and is investing in efficiency so that we can run the same inference for a fraction of the resources.
- AaronAPU 4d ago
  I think most of us when you start typing stuff like that just roll our eyes and get on with our day.
  - ricardobeat 4d ago
    No doubt, it’s a lot easier not to care.
- Fizz43 4d ago
  You can make the same argument about China. They are producing so much Co2 its pushed the world past the point of no return. All the climate change policy in the world cant change anything because china took so long to begin addressing the issue. They started nearly a decade and a half later than they ought to. But yeah american datacenters are the problem here...
  - montroser 4d ago
    What you say is true about China and its global environmental impact. But, if you look at the net effect specifically of DeepSeek versus the net effect of Anthropic or OpenAI, where the investments are being made -- it's a different story.