I am not that concerned about AI writing all the code, because it was never coding what I liked to do, it was development. I started programming to build new things, and writing code was just the way to do it.
Then you might ask "If you can develop things so much faster now, what's the problem?"
When I started, all you needed to build something was a computer (even if it's the cheapest one available) and an internet connection. Documentation was free, tools were free, and what was required was time and effort. But now, unless you want to work 5x slowly, you have to get a coding agent, which doesn't come free (or that's what I thought). In many countries, expecting a student to pay $20 a month for an AI subscription is completely unrealistic. When you pour weeks of effort into building a project, only to watch someone with a higher budget one-shot a similar application using AI, the work loses its magic.
Myself being a student in a developing country, I felt left behind watching people who aren’t even software developers build really cool stuff using AI, much better than what I had spent months making. However, @unitbuilds introduced me to something that I desperately wanted, but never knew existed. I had asked several AI chatbots whether there is an AI agent that also offers free models with credits that refresh periodically. All of them said that all existing ones only have a free tier that runs out. They told me that I can get a free API key from Google AI Studio and use it with Continue. When I tried to do that, I wasn't able to complete a single prompt because Continue sends multiple API requests for a single prompt, which quickly reached the rate limits. I also tried to add my card for higher rate limits, but they said I need an international card. I had to create an entirely new bank account to get it, and when I tried to add it, it failed (ChatGPT said that it's because my account has a low balance, but I only got a generic error). GitHub Copilot's free credits weren't enough for me either. Losing all hope, I created a Python package called ReptClip, which made it slightly easier to work with regular chatbots, but it wasn't as smooth as working with an AI agent that lives in my codebase, reads the files it wants, and writes to them.
The tool @unitbuilds said was Qoder, and it was exactly what I was looking for. It is an AI-focused code editor, a fork of VS Code. The best part? If we use their Lite model, it costs 0.0x credits! Even though it's called the Lite model, in my experience, it didn't feel Lite at all. I even felt faster than anything I have seen before. If you are building like a software engineer instead of a vibe coder, I think you won't even notice the difference.
I couldn't believe that I never knew it existed. Writing this post was completely worth it. Thanks to @unitbuilds for introducing Qoder to me. I highly recommend everyone give it a try. You might save a lot of money while sacrificing very little to nothing.
Top comments (10)
Try Qoder and look into the Chinese models. You can get the same work done for a fraction of the cost.
If you take idea-creation as a road, AI is a toll-gated highway... It makes it faster, but it by no means replaces the old road, it just gave you a different path to the destination. Nobody is stopping you from sitting with a coding book and writing your code by hand, but they also arent stopping you from using free-tier AI to do the job for you? People are placing their own opinionated gates on everything, which is just a way to gatekeep what is actually freely available. I got more done in Qoder with their Lite model in a day, than I did with Claude in a month... For free, vs $20 a month... If you gatekeep yourself, that's your own fault, OpenRouter, Cloudflare Workers AI, Qoder, Deepseek, Alibaba Cloud, GCP, Azure, all have freebies, trials, permanently free things you can use, you dont need a subscription and if you're fooling yourself into thinking you do, then whose fault is that? Not AI, definitely not the other people paying a fortune for it, it's you, you're narrowing your own vision, focusing on what's out of reach, instead of finding new roads. That's always been the case, why write a thing from scratch, when a quick google search gave you a package that does exactly what you need it to do, for free? Take adobe acrobat for OCR, expensive, gatekeeping... Vs 10 min writing a python script, with a freely available package and you get the same result... If you gatekeep yourself, you're just wearing blinders, take them off and view the world around you, nothing got more expensive, or gatekeeped, you're just looking in the wrong places.
Atleast that's my opinion, because I fell in that same trap... I even upgraded to a $100 a month subscription, because I thought there was no other way, now I'm back down to $20 and I dont even use it, because what's free is genuinely better 99% of the time. Why struggle with 5h windows, when the chinese models dont have any cap and are much cheaper and smarter? Qwen 3.8 Max and Kimi 3.0 are beyond the new Opus' intelligence and speed, yet cost a fraction of it? When I realized that, a whole new world opened up.
My suggestion, is download Qoder, give it a try and tell me if you still think that AI is limited to those who spend the most. Because it made me realize, I was just too narrow minded to realize I was gatekeeping myself.
Which, keep in mind, is consumerism. We're all rushing for AI, "it costs more, so it's better", "I need the latest model", etc. We've fallen into the trap that garnered Apple 2 Trillion dollar valuation. We're so scared of falling behind, that we pay a premium for something worse than what's offered cheaper outside of our eyesight.
Thanks a lot for your detailed reply! I'll absolutely try Qoder as early as possible and let you know what I learned. In fact, I was already squeezing every single token from every free tier I knew, such as Gemini, ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, etc. I even created a Python package to make working with regular chatbots as efficient as possible. But I didn't know about Qoder. I'll try it and submit a reply.
You kinda just missed out on the holy grail week leading up to August, where Qwen 3.8 max was in preview and cost practically nothing, while also pushing Ultimate mode, with 1000 free calls a day. But it's still amazing IDE, give the Wiki generator (knowledge) system a try, IMO, that's what every agentic IDE needs desperately
Yeah. I am trying it out. It's great that the Lite models actually cost 0.0x credits. I have to check whether they are any good.
Edit: WHAT? They seem too good to be true. I don't know what to say honestly. It's just the first impression of course. I don't know whether that'll change in the future. The UI's, in some ways, better than regular VS Code, and definitely better than Windsurf.
That was my thought too, till I saw lite run continuously for 24h, without drifting, implementing over 40k LOC to Dwarven Stronghold (think Dwarf Fortress, but written entirely in Rust). It's definitely impressive and it doesnt stop there. Generate Wikis, then watch it maintain it continuously. Also Run Better Harness to do a codebase audit, it'll tell you of any flaws in your codebase and allow for scoped mission execution to resolve it, in accordance to the entire codebase's structure
dev.to/xulingfeng/comment/3bpkn
Have a look at this list and let your mind get blown 😉
Still waiting for your reaction when you eventually hit the quota on Lite (hint, I got over 40k LOC out of it, before it hit cap).
I read dev.to/xulingfeng/comment/3bpkn. That could probably last a LONG time. I wrote the last comment during the night. Now it's morning. Let's see if I run out.
Edit: I got a lot of things done with it. All thanks to you!
Sooööōoöööoōōoō...
I have to be blunt:
I was expecting Aerosmith - Crazy.