Chutes.ai
Chutes offers plans starting at $3 as well. With Chutes, you have access to many more models. Their performance is underwhelming. I would recommend Chutes over Z.ai just because you can use more models, but that’s the only reason. Their privacy policy is ambiguous. I had issues signing up; basically, authenticating with Google or GitHub isn’t working right now. Based on a recommendation from another user on their Discord, I used a VPN and created an account without using Google or GitHub, and it worked.
Synthetic
Synthetic offers a $20-per-month plan that includes GLM-4.6, Qwen3-480B, Kimi K2, DeepSeek-V3.1, and many other models. Synthetic is relatively new, and they’ve been super open and engaging on Discord. They have a very clear privacy policy: they do not store your prompts or completions beyond 14 days without your consent. Note that there are issues such as tool calls hanging (aka buffering) for a long time and, occasionally, leaking native tool calls or tool calls into the message stream rather than proper OpenAI-compatible calls. You can use a CLI like LLxprt Code or Code Puppy, or an IDE like Roo Code, that supports OpenAI endpoints. Synthetic is also developing their own coding agent called Octofriend.
Cerebras
Cerebras plans start at $50. I ripped them a new one in my last column, but they’ve greatly improved their overall TPM (tokens per minute) and request caps. Cerebras is now the fastest provider bar none. Their policies explicitly note they don’t use your prompts. Cerebras is the fastest Qwen3-Coder-480B you can access. While the Qwen3 model supports 256K context, the Cerebras version is limited to 131K. I’ve found that usable but challenging. However, I still have a subscription in my tool kit because it is the fastest access to one of the best open-weight models around. Cerebras has a free tier, but it is barely enough for connection testing.
