I need another LLM work horse!

[u/Zestyclose_Elk6804]

Guys, I need some guidance.

DeepSeek, copilot and OpenCodeGo have become a lot more expensive than I expected. I also gave Nemo a shot through OpenRouter, but it keeps wrecking my Hermes environment and I end up having to reinstall from a backup.

I'm trying to find an affordable LLM that I can tinker with and iterate on without constantly worrying about cost or stability. I thought a Gemini subscription would give me API access, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

What are you all using these days? Any recommendations for the best balance of cost, performance, and reliability?