This is exactly the model that DeepSeek V4 Flash followed, and it's been insanely successful as a result, even though it's not frontier.
replyDeepSeek v4 Pro & MiMo v2.5 Pro (Opus 4.6 quality models for code) are insanely cheap for agent-driven work due to their super low cached-input prices ($0.0036/mtok) [0]. For Luna, the cached-input price drop isn't disclosed in TFA, but the pricing page puts it at $0.02/mtok, & that's 5x more expensive.
reply[0] I am constantly surprised how much work pay-as-you-go with DeepSeek / MiMo will get done. I've barely crossed $2 each in a month of use (~200m tokens).
Absolutely. Although DeepSeek started announcing "Peak valley" pricing which started making me nervous. I have spent $50 usd in July on deepseek and for that much spend I got SO MUCH mileage.
replyI feel perfectly content in using pay as you go pricing with deepseek. On the other hand, although Anthropic's models used to be my bread and butter for personal work, they are simply too expensive to reach for these days.