I generally prefer Sonnet as comparison too. Opus, as good as it is, is just too expensive. The "best" model is the one I can use, not the one I can't afford.
These days, by default I just use Sonnet/Haiku. In most cases it's more than good enough for me. It's plenty with $20 plan.
With MiniMax, or GLM-4.7, some people like me are just looking for Sonnet level capability at much cheaper price.
Are you using GLM-4.7? I've just spent a fortune on Opus, and I heard GLM was close -- but after integrating it into cursor, it seems to spin forever, loose tool use, and generates partial? plans. I did look into using it with the claude cli tool, so it could be cursor specific -- but I havent had the best experience despite going for the pro plan with them. Any advise on how you're using GLM effectively? If at all
At the moment Opus is the only model i can trust even when it generates "refactoring work", it can do the refactoring.
I’m on the Lite plan. For coding, I still prefer Claude because the models are simply better. I mainly use CLI tools like Claude Code and OpenCode.
I’m also managing a few projects and teams. One way I’m getting value from my GLM subscription is by building a daily GitHub PR summary bot using a GitHub Action. It’s good enough for me to keep up with the team and to monitor higher-risk PRs.
Right now I’m using GLM more as an agent/API rather than as a coding tool. Claude works best for agentic coding for me.
I’m on Claude $20 plan and I usually start with Haiku, then I switch to Sonnet or Opus for harder or longer tasks.
> I did look into using it with the claude cli tool, so it could be cursor specific
Claude Code with GLM seems ok to me, I just it use it as a backup LLM if in case I hit usage limits but for some light refactoring it did the job well.
Are you also facing issues with Claude Code and GLM?
No matter the price they're far cheaper than a developer and opus / gemini 3 pro are both at a level where they're really useful pair programmers and opus at times can be given a spec to implement and it will do it after 30 minutes with no input from me.
Per successful tasks. The result are mixed. Like you mentioned, it can be cheaper but only in some use cases. I'm only on the $20 plan. If I use Opus and it's not as efficient for my current tasks, I'll burn through my limit pretty fast. Ended up can't use any anymore for the next few hours.
Whereas with Sonnet/Haiku, I'm much more guaranteed to have 100% AI assistance throughout my coding session. This matters more to me right now. Just a tradeoff I'm willing to make.
> Claude Opus 4.5, our frontier coding model, is now available in Claude Code for Pro users. Pro users can select Opus 4.5 using the /model command in their terminal.
Opus 4.5 will consume rate limits faster than Sonnet 4.5. We recommend using Opus for your most complex tasks and using Sonnet for simpler tasks.
Use Claude Opus in Antigravity. Google is very generous with the limits. The best part is, if you hit your limit, you can switch to Gemini Pro High.
I think Google is able to do this because they host Claude on their own TPUs in their datacentres (probably for Vertex AI customers). So they can undercut just about anyone include Anthropic on costs!
No matter which model you start with, having the other frontier model as a backup is fantastic. Essentially you’re getting 2x the limit.
These days, by default I just use Sonnet/Haiku. In most cases it's more than good enough for me. It's plenty with $20 plan.
With MiniMax, or GLM-4.7, some people like me are just looking for Sonnet level capability at much cheaper price.