AI

My journey with using LLMs

Top Pick of 2025

Claude

by Anthropic

Claude has become my go-to AI assistant for coding, writing, and learning very quickly. I believe their Max 5x ($100/mo) is the best value for budget-conscious consumers like myself.

Claude CodeBest Tool CallingHigh Value in Max PlanQuite Fast Interface
Top Overall Pick

My AI Stack

Claude Max 5x

My favorite model provider for general use and coding

GitHub Copilot Pro

Random edits when I don't want to start a Claude session

Active UseView →

Gemini Pro

Chatting, asking questions, and image generation

Occasional UseView →
v0

v0 Free

Generating boilerplate UIs

Occasional UseView →

Qwen

My favorite open source LLM for chatting

Occasional UseView →

Favorite Models

Claude 4 Sonnet

Anthropic

The perfect balance of capability, speed, and price. Perfect for development with React.

Claude 4.1 Opus

Anthropic

Amazing planner, useful for Plan Mode in Claude Code. Useful in code generation too.

Qwen3-235B-A22B

Alibaba

The OG thinking model. Amazing, funny, and smart for chats. Surprisingly good at coding too.

Gemini 2.5 Pro

Google

Amazing for Deep Research and reasoning tasks. I hate it for coding.

gemma3 27B

Google

My favorite for playing around with AI or creating a project. Easy to run locally and open weight!

Tool Reviews

Claude Code

Pros:

  • Flagship models
  • High usage limits
  • Exceptional Claude integration

Cons:

  • Can be slow
  • High investment cost to get value

Best overall for Claude lovers

Cursor

Pros:

  • Works like magic
  • Lots of model support
  • Huge ecosystem and community

Cons:

  • Expensive
  • Hype around it is dying
  • Unclear/manipulative pricing

Great all-rounder, slowly dying

Trae

Pros:

  • Good UI/UX
  • Very budget-friendly
  • Fantastic premium usage limits

Cons:

  • No thinking
  • Occasional parsing issues

Essential for productivity

GitHub Copilot

Pros:

  • Latest models
  • Great autocomplete
  • Budget-friendly subscription price

Cons:

  • No thinking
  • Low quality output
  • Bad support for other IDEs

Good for casual use