Coding with LLMs in the summer of 2025 – an update

> Gemini 2.5 PRO | Claude Opus 4

Whether it's vibe coding, agentic coding, or copy pasting from the web interface to your editor, it's still sad to see the normalization of private (i.e., paid) LLM models. I like the progress that LLMs introduce and I see them as a powerful tool, but I cannot understand how programmers (whether complete nobodies or popular figures) dont mind adding a strong dependency on a third party in order to keep programming. Programming used to be (and still is, to a large extent) an activity that can be done with open and free tools. I am afraid that in a few years, that will no longer be possible (as in most programmers will be so tied to a paid LLM, that not using them would be like not using an IDE or vim nowadays), since everyone is using private LLMs. The excuse "but you earn six figures, what' $200/month to you?" doesn't really capture the issue here.

> The excuse "but you earn six figures, what' $200/month to you?" doesn't really capture the issue here.

Just like every other subscription model, including the one in the Black Mirror episode, Common People. The value is too good to be true for the price at the beginning. But you become their prisoner in the long run, with increasing prices and degrading quality.

I don’t get it. There are multiple providers. I cancel one provider and sign up for someone new in a few minutes when I feel like changing. I’ve been doing this every few months.

I think the only people worried about lock-in or Black Mirror themes are the people who are thinking about these subscriptions in an abstract sense.

It’s really easy to change providers. They’re all improving. Competition is intense.

In the early days of the Web, competition was intens in Search Engine market but eventually one of them won the competition and became the only viable option. I expect this will happen to AI as well. In future only one AI company will dominate the market and people will have no choice but to use it.

I'm seeing quite a few people on this site recently talking about their Kagi subscriptions, claiming it is sufficiently better than Google to be worth the money.