At home I currently use MiniMax via OpenRouter - it’s pretty good and very cheap. They have a subscription plan, but I’m not ready to commit to it yet.
Another way to keep the ability to try out new models is to buy a reseller subscription like Cursor’s.
I tried OpenRouter but I feel the money flies even with these models, it is not comparable to a subscription but yes, it's very good for trying. Maybe I should test other models alongside GPT 5.5 to see which one fits me.
I'm also unemployed. So far the models that I've used the most are Kimi and GLM. I haven't done that much agentic coding though, I've mostly used them for studying math and general conversations and I'm generally happy with their performance.
Another way to keep the ability to try out new models is to buy a reseller subscription like Cursor’s.