Main reason I haven’t switched over to the new pi coding agent (or even fully to Claude Code alternatives) is the price point. I eat tokens for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

I’m on a $100/mo plan, but the codex bar makes it look like I’m burning closer to $500 every 30 days. I tried going local with Qwen 3 (coding) on a Blackwell Pro 6000, and it still feels a beat behind, either laggy, or just not quite good enough for me to fully relinquish Claude Code.

Curious what other folks are seeing: any success stories with other agents on local models, or are you mostly sticking with proprietary models?

I’m feeling a bit vendor-locked into Claude Code: it’s pricey, but it’s also annoyingly good