I'd like to give the new GLM models a try for personal stuff.
And people keep claiming the token providers are running inference at a profit.
Not everyone gets $1K of usage, and you don't know how fat the per-token margins are. It's like saying the local buffet place is losing money because you eat $100 worth of takeout for $30.
Well, we're going to find out sooner rather than later. Right now you don't know how thin (or negative) the margins are, either, after all.
All we know for certain is how much VC cash they got. Revenue, spend, profit, etc calculated according to GAAP are still a secret.
If you're trying to minimize cost then having one of the inexpensive models do exploratory work and simple tasks while going back to Opus for the serious thinking and review is a good hybrid model. Having the $20/month Claude plan available is a good idea even if you're primarily using OpenRouter available models.
I think trying to use anything other than the best available SOTA model for important work is not a good tradeoff, though.
Extrapolating that out, the subscription pricing is HEAVILY subsidized. For similar work in Claude Code, I use a Pro plan for $20/month, and rarely bang up against the limits.
It's obviously capital-subsidized and so I have zero expectation of that lasting, but it's pretty anti-competitive to Cursor and others that rely on API keys.