Coming back to this... Honestly, sticking to a 10 dollar subscription might be a trap because you are still paying for stuff you might not use every single hour. I would suggest moving away from fixed subs entirely and going with a pay-as-you-go setup instead. It sounds scary but for light freelance work it is usually way cheaper than a flat fee. Check these out:

• Codeium Individual Tier is actually free for individuals and works surprisingly well. It is maybe not as smart as the top-tier paid ones but it does the job without the monthly hit.
• Continue Dev VS Code Extension paired with OpenRouter API. Instead of a sub, you just put 5 bucks into OpenRouter and use models like Claude 3 Haiku. Just make sure to watch your token usage because if you leave it on auto-complete with a big model it can eat credits fast. I would definitely avoid the local stuff if your laptop is already struggling... it just kills productivity when your fans start screaming and VS Code lags.

> My budget is like ten bucks max for everything AI related right now. I have been using DeepSeek Coder V2 API for a while and honestly the value is unbeatable. I switched from more expensive options and I am super satisfied with the reasoning capabilities for such a low price point. You can just plug that API into Sourcegraph Cody Free Tier and it works like a charm. I usually end up spending maybe three or four dollars a month even on heavy dev days. If you want something even simpler, Supermaven Free Tier is actually legit for zero dollars and the speed is incredible. It works well with VS Code and wont chug your laptop resources like a local model does. Glad to help if you need the specific setup steps for the API keys... its pretty straightforward tbh.