How on earth did people get anything done before agents?
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A developer, feeling 10x more effective with agents, is seeking alternatives for model routing. They are currently building their own model router with openrouter, but it's not performing well. They admire standardcompute.com's model router for its monthly subscription and lack of usage limits, but note it doesn't support free models. The developer is looking for other good, preferably VC-subsidized, alternatives.
I have personally become 10x more effective compared to one year ago. I love it as there is always so much I want to do!
Right now my rate limiting factor is usage limits by far. The token bill bites quite hard and make it hard to justify some projects, so I’m on the lookout to maximise agentic work per dollar.
Codex/claude etc. is subsidised atm, but they are also wasting a lot of tokens on expensive, non-open source models that could have done the job way more efficient.
Therefore been building my own model router with openrouter but not working very well (https://openrouter.ai/docs/guides/routing/routers/auto-router ). Think standardcompute.com has an excellent model router and like that it’s a monthly thing and not random unpredictable 5-hours usage limits etc. However, they don’t serve free models which would be nice.
Any other good alternatives right now? Preferably heavily subsidised by VC money 💰