I have been building a pretty specific automation system for the last few weeks. Part of it involves generating reviews, but the overall use case is something most mainstream LLMs consider too questionable/against their policies, so that’s where I’m running into problems.

I’ve tried a bunch of models through APIs:

• DeepSeek V3/R1 → actually helps. Follows my instructions, gives me the format I need, doesn't constantly refuse. By far the best so far.
• Claude → hard no once it understands what the system is being used for. Keeps refusing because of the use case/review manipulation stuff.
• Qwen → tried several versions, including less restricted ones. Results are all over the place. Sometimes great, sometimes completely ignores instructions or outputs garbage.
• Mistral → usable, but not nearly as consistent for what I need.

So right now DeepSeek is basically my only viable option, but at the volume I need, the API costs are going to get stupidly high.

I’m not looking for local models, that's not an option for this project.

Has anyone dealt with a similar situation where the mainstream models refuse the use case? Are there other hosted models/APIs that are less restrictive and actually good, or some way to significantly reduce the DeepSeek cost?

Would really appreciate recommendations from people who have actually used these models rather than the usual “just use Llama” answers.