AI Model Switching Costs

AI models currently have negligible switching costs. The coding harness might be a bit bothersome, but after a week you are good to go.

I started my AI coding journey in Claude Code. For a long time, Anthropic models were good enough for me. For almost a year, I did not even use any Open AI, Google or Open source models for my coding.

After the launch of GPT-5.5, I used it for a small coding project. The model was as good as Anthropic's models. I shifted between both these models depending on my usage limits. As I coded more and more, my limits got exhausted quickly.

I tried Gemini models, but their performance was poor. I subscribed for an Ollama cloud pro plan to try open source models. Quite a few open source models performed as good as the top-tier models, so my model portfolio expanded.

In the past few weeks, I rarely used Anthropic models. Both Opus 5 and Claude 5 performed poorly. I was happy using GPT 5.6 Luna and DeepSeek 4.1 Flash for all my coding needs. Open Source models also give me much higher usage limits, so I rarely worried about my weekly limits.

Now, after the launch of Opus 5.5, it became my default option. Any AI model or harness can use the same standard agents.md and skills.md file without any issue. AI model developers standardised the entire coding workflow. It is easy to use any model I like.

AI model developers standardised the coding workflow to ensure quick adoption. The same process allows people like me to use any model I desire.

Now, not everyone will be keen to subscribe to different plans as I did. However, it is far more economical to subscribe to four different pro plans than just one Max plan (80 USD vs 100/200 USD