Im cancelling my Claude Code subscription

A developer is canceling their Claude Code subscription after testing DeepSeek V4 Flash against Anthropic's Sonnet 5 and Opus 4.8 on a real-world coding task, finding that the free DeepSeek model outperformed both in feature count, cost, and result quality. DeepSeek V4 Flash completed the task in 4 minutes at a cost of $0.000004, adding 11 new features, while Sonnet 5 took 2 minutes at $0.40 with stripped features and Opus 4.8 took 1:37 at $0.30 but produced a non-functional result.

Im canceling my claude subscription Once upon a time i was out of tokens. again. so i launched opencode to keep working. but this time i picked DeepSeek V4 Flash free, and i wasnt ready for what happened. deepseek finished the work faster. for my workflow — figure out how something should work, give the bot a list of instructions how the software should work and how to create it — deepseek gave better results, faster. claude sonnet could finish too, but it used more tokens and the result was usually more buggy. and i can hear you screaming in the comments — why sonnet and not opus or even fable? the reason is simple, token budget. but my point stands: the smaller model, at least from my day to day work, outperforms the bigger one. but only when im providing the instructions, i think. this is just how i work — i have a vision how software should work and i want my agent to execute it. lets get technical | model | parameter count | ram usage | |---|---|---| | Sonnet 5 | 1T-2T rumors+leaks | 640gb-1.2Tb | | DeepSeek V4 Flash | 284B open source weights | 85gb-570gb depends on quantization | and the main deal for me is that this model can run locally on consumer hardware. im not saying you should cancel your claude sub. this works especially for my workflow. Real world tests so lets rewrite my old software — twitch viewer alert. it works like this: it watches the viewer count, and when the number changes, it fires a notification. theres some settings too, but i dont remember much more. the task for the agents is to convert this into a chrome extension. originally it was just a script you paste into the browser console — dont judge me, i was 19 when i wrote it. each model was tested once in autonomous mode. the metrics are: token usage, time, and how many times i had to step in to keep things moving. Prompt hi i have this older project https://github.com/wallach-game/twitch-viewer-alerter and i wanna convert it into chrome addon, btw do not push to this repo, keep it as local cloned repo DeepSeek V4 Flash time: 4 minutes tokens: 46,796 cost: $0.000004 interventions: 0 notes: added 7 new features and an icon features added: - viewer count tracking: every 5s → every 3s - alert box: replaced with browser notifications - notifications with buttons open stream / mute for 30m - on/off switches in popup - sound alert - cooldown 10s, configurable - spa navigation support via mutationobserver - offline stream detection - viewer count badge on toolbar - robust selectors with 3 strategies and fallbacks - purple play triangle icon ui: notification working: Sonnet 5 time: 2 minutes tokens: ~562,910 mostly cache cost: $0.40 interventions: 0 notes: the ui has less stuff than the original extension verdict: imo it just yanked the old code and removed unnecessary stuff. but it figured out that browser notifications are not possible anymore — good catch. ui: notification: Opus 4.8 time: 1:37 tokens: ~148,500 cost: $0.30 interventions: 0 notes: this version doesnt have a settings ui. kinda odd. and the notification doesnt even work — it created some localstorage nonsense and literally told me at the end it might not work. also, it never figured out that browser notifications dont work without https in chrome extensions. Verdict so heres the thing. deepseek did it in 4 minutes, added 11 new features, and cost basically nothing. sonnet did it faster 2 minutes but the output was worse — stripped features, yanked old code. opus was the fastest at 1:37 but the result literally didnt work. the numbers speak for themselves. deepseek v4 flash cost $0.000004, sonnet cost $0.40, opus cost $0.30. for my workflow — give clear instructions and let the model execute — the cheap model wins. but in the end sonnet did what the prompt said — convert into an extension. and it did it. next time ill try a better prompt, something like “copy the original behavior first, then add new features and polish”. am i saying you should cancel your sub? no. this is what works for me. but if you work like i do — plan first, then let the ai build it — give deepseek v4 flash a shot. you might be surprised. and also deepseek screwed me over a few times, especially paired with opencodes auto exec command. its idea of fixing a running server app was deleting it without backup. but honestly, this can be blamed on my prompting. Final words im aware deepseek pricing is probably not sustainable at this level, but imo the same can be said about claude subscription. but i dont wanna get political here. the fact is that deepseek outperformed claude with a model that can be run locally on consumer hardware. thats the part that matters.