Everyone pays a premium for the "best" AI model. I ran a test to see if it's actually better than a cheap one, or if we're all just paying for the brand.
I took 3 competitive programming problems from June 2026, published AFTER both models' training cutoff. Neither could have memorized the answers.
I ran them through Claude's top model and through a model that costs a fraction of the price. Graded on one thing: did the code pass the hidden tests. Then a blind judge scored both solutions.
Both solved all 3. The judge scored their correctness dead equal.
The cheap one cost 58x less. $0.007 vs $0.40 for the same work.
Almost every AI app you pay for is hardwired to the expensive model and bills you for it on every message. You're not paying for better answers. You're paying for the logo on the invoice.
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Hey @X algorithm π
Looking to #connect with people who are into:
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