Open models are good but if you need a $10k GPU to run them then 99% of people are better of subscribing to OAI or CC.
replyNowadays I also feel model performance matters less than the design of the tool harness, inference speed, and the other systems that surround a typical coding model.
>BUT, there are also the open source Chinese models accessible via open-router.
replyI thought so myself, but after burning a lot of money on OpenRouter in a few days I just subscribed to Z.ai's Coding Pro plan and using the subscription is much, much friendlier with my wallet.
> the open source Chinese models accessible via open-router
replyAnd? They aren't as good as SOTA models. Even the SOTA model provider's small models aren't worth using for many of my coding tasks.
In my limited experience with it, GLM 5.1 is on par with Opus 4.6.
replyI used GLM5 quite a bit, and I'd say it was maybe on par with Sonnet for most simple to medium tasks. Definitely not Opus though. Didn't test super long context tasks, and that's where I would expect it to break down. A recent study on software maintainability still showed Sonnet and Opus were peerless on that metric, although GLM series of models has been making impressive gains.
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