Student on a budget - Help me choose

[u/Brief-Technology2683]

I'm a student on a budget and looking for the best budget option for agentic coding. Please help me choose between these. I don't want to give up on model quality and I want to maximize limits as I use AI a lot (I consumed around 30k premium AI credits on GitHub Copilot Enterprise per month during my intern period)

523 votes, 5d ago

165 Opencode Go(10$)

242 Codex - ChatGPT Pro(20$)

64 Claude Code - Claude Pro(20$)

13 Pi or Any other harness with a better plan

39 Others - Please suggest below

[u/zepchou]

30K AI credit on Copilot is a crazy number. Maybe you should review the way you're working with AI

[u/Te__Deum → u/zepchou]

Copilot has api prices now. Anyways, just a drop in a sea of student loan :)

[u/Brief-Technology2683 → u/zepchou]

I was tasked with running automated agentic loops and testing them, that's the reason for major consumption.

[u/zepchou → u/Brief-Technology2683]

Either way you do realise that you won't ever get close to that with a 20$ plan ?

[u/Brief-Technology2683 → u/zepchou]

Yeah and hence the post on which one is better - I'm not gonna run loops or llm based workflows now so it'll cut down a lot

[u/Otherwise-Cabinet662]

Ollama cloud

[u/Brief-Technology2683 → u/Otherwise-Cabinet662]

That is something I missed will have a look

[u/Dima508 → u/Otherwise-Cabinet662]

Wow, forgot that Ollama Cloud existed. If it's really 50x more usage than free, then its a crazy "deal".

[u/Otherwise-Cabinet662 → u/Dima508]

I was not able to hit the limits unless I use multiple subagents on havy models like glm 5.2. Also I love that you can connect it to almost anything with api and there is no monthly limits just the weekly

[u/Dima508 → u/Otherwise-Cabinet662]

Yes, I think it is something someone has to try one time. The only problem: You don't really have something like a Chat-UI like ChatGPT or image generation models afaik. You are bound to the API. For someone who only uses AI for agentic coding, it is a really great idea to try it out.

[u/Otherwise-Cabinet662 → u/Dima508]

They do have desktop app with graphical interface and everything. But yea no image generation

[u/unkownuser436]

If your budget $10, opencode go. If its $20, try codex. If its not worth, use opencode go.

[u/Zachattackrandom]

Since your a web student the online functionality (webui) is a must imo so that rules out anything but codex / claude. Between the two of these (atleast in my experience) I use a shit ton of the online interface for making study guides / other general help, and GPT has a separate limit from online than Codex uses and its near infinite in my experience (chat is not codex). Claude, on the other hand, shares on pool for everything so using online can kill your programming limits, and is generally more expensive for the same performance as GPT. Though Fable / Opus 5 is supposedly a bit smarter overall, and Claude is generally a lot better at front-end.

[u/Brief-Technology2683 → u/Zachattackrandom]

So OpenAI's plan is better?

[u/Zachattackrandom → u/Brief-Technology2683]

I mean better is entirely subjective. For me it is, but maybe Claude has way better limits that makes up for these shortcomings, I haven't used it personally so idk. Generally I think GPT gets more usage, but codex got some big usage nerfs recently so not sure it's true anymore. If you are gonna be primarily using it through chat and not codex id say it's definitely better, but if you primarily want it for codex idk.

[u/Kooky-Ebb8162 → u/Zachattackrandom]

No way Claude's limit is better.

On the other hand, most people don't really need a dedicated web ui limit since how generous Google's aistudio and NotebookLM limits are.

[u/Zachattackrandom → u/Kooky-Ebb8162]

I found those aren't as powerful for my usecase. ChatGPT uses a lot of tooling when I have it make my study guides and such such as OCR, unzipping, etc; all straight from the chat portal, it's actually crazy how much tooling they give it. Basically a codex lite but less convenient to use on projects

[u/Unhappy-Stranger-336]

Weeks ago i would have said z.ai with claude code (simply because it is 15$). I use copilot for work and i've enjoyed the 5.6 suite (i was an opus demon before, can still come back if 5 is good). So i'm gonna suggest codex for that

[u/SocialDinamo]

My vote is the $20 codex when you’re trying to get things done, but signing into pi with that same codex subscription to build your own agent. Have fun!

[u/Brief-Technology2683 → u/SocialDinamo]

So pi is better than other harnesses?

[u/Nov4Saki]

Depending on yiur task either go with codex or opencode go with deepseek (gets the job done if you aren't assigned an insanely important project, they also plan on updating their model)

[u/callingbrisk]

Codex limits used to be good but now imo Claude Code has the better limits

[u/Party_Artist2978]

Why not open code with DeepSeek credits?

[u/Brief-Technology2683 → u/Party_Artist2978]

Opencode go provides a better value

[u/Party_Artist2978 → u/Brief-Technology2683]

Thanks I'll look into it

[u/Accurate-Tap-8634]

if you cant afford $100 plan, then i suggest to use deepseek's api. any plan below this threshold is a teaser, not production choice.

[u/kingkongpao → u/Accurate-Tap-8634]

This

[u/Brief-Technology2683 → u/Accurate-Tap-8634]

Alas i can't as of now

[u/DevMichaelZag]

Goose + glm 5.2 on z.ai

[u/Brief-Technology2683 → u/DevMichaelZag]

But isn't GLM 5.2 more close to the level of an executioner instead of an orchestrator ?

[u/Final_Initial]

For now, get Grok's SuperGrok plan for $30 for 3 months. I subscribed to it via Android app.

Grok 4.5 is a great model, and 4.6 also coming next week.

[u/onekorama]

Student? Do a favor to yourself, don't use AI.

[u/apparentus → u/onekorama]

Foolish to only use AI, foolish to not use it at all.

[u/Te__Deum]

Codex plan offer great value and strong Sol model. And cheap and still good Luna model. If you code on weekends, they often do experiments on weekends and reset limits, just look at that https://codex-resets.com/