SMRTR ProgrammingFeb 24, 2026Hacker News

OpenCode on a Budget – Synthetic.new, Chutes.ai, and Z.ai

SMRTR summary

A developer compares three budget AI coding services - Z.ai ($3-30/month), Chutes.ai ($3-20/month), and Synthetic.new ($20-60/month) - testing their speed, model selection, and quotas. Chutes offers the best value with access to GLM-5, Kimi K2.5, and other open-weight models, while Z.ai provides useful MCP servers but has gotten slower recently.

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