Yes - in short, open models like Deepseek, Mimo, Kimi, and GLM tend to complete tasks with less tokens and cost less per token than both Sonnet and Haiku. So those models are more cost efficient, and we often think of that as them having higher "capability-per-dollar" than Sonnet or Haiku.
Much of Claude Code's internal model routing ends up delegating tasks to Sonnet or Haiku, so by intercepting those calls and using open models instead, we often see better performance at a better price.
Much of Claude Code's internal model routing ends up delegating tasks to Sonnet or Haiku, so by intercepting those calls and using open models instead, we often see better performance at a better price.