$50 monthly budget, which coding models would you recommend now?
I currently have a claude pro monthly subscription ($20) which I use for coding. It's been useful but I'm fatigued from optimising my work around it's session limits. There are so many choices and providers out there today but hard to get a good signal about what's good. I'm not looking for another Opus-level model but something reliable enough that it can follow TDD well.
Just get a ChatGPT $20/month subscription and use the codex-cli. I’ve been using it every day since November and never run into limits
Hey man, here's how to properly spend your 50 bucks and get the most bang for the $$:
opencode go - $10 a month gets you decent allowance with latest GLM, MiniMax, and Kimi.
Windsurf - $20 gives u access to nearlly all models.
For me, I'm having these two subscriptions plus: shared Codex plans & shared Kimi coding Allegretto from Chinese resellers for around $10.
I only use the Claude Opus/Sonnet inside Windsurf after everything is crystal clear, or I want to let it handle tricky stuff where other models can't address. I use GLM/Kimi for everything else. And Windsurf offers free models all the time.
Codex? I know OpenAI is really politically unpopular right now, but it has very high usage limits for the $20 plan. Claude ($20) and Codex ($20) are hard to beat in terms of pure value. Just set Codex on Thinking-High/Extra-High, and it is Opus 4.6 levels for sure (although both have their niche, where they're superior).
Claude for the default 5-hour limits. Cursor for the monthly limits when those run out. Cursor is one of the more efficient ones for dumb uses... if you're typing out your own tests, it should work great.
A lot of people recommend OpenAI Codex lately, but I feel it's more suited to vibe coding, where you're giving it a very high level idea.
Given the hard budget, I'd throw the $30 on API credits and use those as overflow. If you can do the $100 plan though, that would be optimal. It's a frustrating game though. I'd love to see a 50 dollar plan. At least Claude has a 100 plan, unlike openai.
You can swicth to Sonnet 4.6. It is even an fantastic model for coding, without changing you subscription.
Here the 5 hours window limit is much more larger, if using it with specific tasks.
If you want to change the LLM, my advice is Kimi K2 that's much more chip and very skilled for coding.
(you are right: Opus is a very token-consuming even in my experience, but often it is over-skilled and you don't need it)
Get a few GitHub Copilot accounts at 10 bucks each and use OpenAI models, they have very high usage limits I honestly struggle to even hit with one 10 dollar subscription.
I would keep Claude code for the heavy lifting and then opencode zen (10usd) with Kimi k2.5 for the rest.
What is ur daily coding time?
Based on this time I could recommend a good stack that might save ur money as well.
GitHub Copilot Pro plus gives you access to many models and if you use them a lot, Microsoft loses money (though they can brag about one more active user and get your data).
It doesn’t give you the largest context windows, but most models perform poorly when the context is very big so it’s not a dealbreaker to me.