It blows frontier API pricing out of the water, but again, look at cost per task, not token usage. Still easily wins though for my work.
I do think it's the most viable alternative I've seen so far, and that applies pressure to the frontier models. Should subscription prices hike or become unavailable for some reason, I know what I'll be using.
When pricing this, it's important to consider whether or not you want to opt out of data training. You won't get the advertised rate. Also the dsf 4.1 subscription providers are throttled af... and of course they are, because otherwise they'd be haemorrhaging money.
It depends on how you use it. I used to have the $100/mo Claude plan. I would easily blow through limits when I was on the $20/mo plan, but would rarely hit them when on the $100/mo plan.
Lately I've been using GLM 5.3 Flash (from Fireworks), and my spend is $1-$2 per day when I use it for coding, so max $60/mo (less, since I don't use it every day). IIRC DeepSeek 4.1 Flash is priced similarly.
If I had to pay API rates for frontier models, I can't see how $2/day would cut it. Maybe GLM/DS are chattier, but not anywhere near the 10x required to make the price difference not matter.
Sure, if you're running agentic loops all day, 5 days a week, you're probably going to blow past even $200/mo in API charges pretty quickly.
I suspect you are right. For context, I was assuming a 20x w/ OpenAI or Anthropic subscription as the comparison (or both). dsf 4.1 was going to run me about 2-3 times the cost of either of those for the same amount of work. Obviously you can optimize differently, but that's true of subscriptions too. I was using pi and had it evaluate it's ideal context compaction point based on usage and API rates. Keep in mind though I was using a ZDR provider, so slightly higher costs. If I want them to train on my code, I could shave a few $ off.
That's not even taking into consideration all of the resets you get from the frontier subs. Which lately seems to at least double usage (more like 5x recently with OpenAI if you count the credit grants). But OpenAI is tweaking it's pricing, so it's always a moving target... which is kind of annoying until you learn to just ignore it.
I use DS 4.1 flash it all the time, i struggle to spend more than 1 euro per day on it, even working all day long.
DS4.1 Flash not really cheaper than frontier models???
It is insanely cheaper.
DS4.1 flash is $0.30 in / $1.20 out (per M, peak, cache miss) Opus 5.5 is $4.00 in / $20 out (per M, cache miss)
However, that is API prices.
Anthropic offers a $200/mo subscription. How this translates into usage is admittedly a bit opaque, subject to change, and depends on how exactly you use it. But it's a lot of usage - Semianalysis data shows that $200 is getting you around $2,500 of usage at API rates if you use Opus 5.5. This is close to what I'm seeing anecdotally with my accounts, if anything I have been getting a bit more.
Now, unlike DeepSeek, you can't use your subscriptions to power live AI-driven products, or resell tokens in any way. But for personal coding agents, you can use as many of these subscriptions as you want, for now. So I am paying effectively basically 8% of the published API rates, so at my usage:
DSv4.1: $0.30 in/ $1.20 out Opus 5.5: $0.32 in / $1.60 out
Obviously, those aren't real prices, but they accurately convey apples to apples what my everyday usage costs me and most other heavy users, and why it's so easy for me to stick with Anthropic/OpenAI.
I don't think it's a coincidence, either - I think the token allowances for these subscriptions are set to be competitive with the open models, so that most coding users (and their incredibly valuable data) stay with the frontier labs, while VC-funded wrapper companies and less-price-sensitive giant companies with strict procurement policies pay exorbitant markups for enterprise contracts at the API rate.
And Anthropic is somewhat unusual in that 10x more tokens via the subsidized path. I imagine more rugpulls are coming.
Not disputing your point in any way, just noting there's already caveats, and more are likely coming.
I still use them because they aren't as squeamish about random things American CEOs don't like like decompilation.
They are not most expensive per Task. DeepSeek 4.1 flash is bloody efficient.
I currently did run a test myself: - Use the pay as you go offer on OpenRouter on the same task on two different project: Perf optimisation on C++ codebase both with Anthropic and DeepSeek.
- I exploded my 15$ budget in a half-week with Anthropic.
- I did two weeks and half with DeepSeek.