Why is it so expensive? #279
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Thanks for your feedback on this @achimstruve. I moved it over to a discussion. The short answer is that Plandex prioritizes capability and getting good results over saving tokens. While it does use caching and selective context loading to reduce costs, it also doesn’t arbitrarily cut the model off from loading context that it determines may be relevant, which can make it more expensive for some use cases than other tools—though it really depends. On getting output that you didn’t ask for: this can definitely be an issue and is something I’m working to address. Stay tuned over the next month or so for improvements that will help with this. In the meantime, it helps to be very specific in your prompting about what you do and don’t want. That can make a huge difference. |
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I am vibe coding a lot with Cursor and can do like 500 prompts per month for $20 using Claude 4 sonnet. This implies many days of constant coding. However for some reason using Plandex with the default settings (daily-driver model pack with OpenRouter API key) which uses sometimes Claude 4 sonnet and often mixes in weaker chatGPT models I burnt through like $8 dollars on an afternoon. Sure OpenRouter is a little more expensive, but this does not explain this huge cost divergence. All while I was constantly coding with Cursor in my IDE on another project. This gives me the exact comparison. Furthermore I must say that unfortunately the quality of outcomes is a bit worse than the experience I have with Cursor. Sure this is open-source, but it is also more expensive at the same time. E.g. often it does way more than it was prompted to do. In one case I just wanted it to create a task list for a new project, but instead it immediately started with some arbitrary implementations..
Probably I am doing something wrong here and therefore would appreciate any tips or inputs on how to get higher quality with lower costs, comparable to Cursor.
Also I am super happy to have found Plandex so that I can vibe code via console and the option of using my OpenRouter API key.
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