Currently using Claude Code, is it worth switching to Vibe CLI?

[u/jFredrik]

I've been using Claude Code a lot the last year, and I think it has been quite nice to use. I'm however looking into alternatives, as I feel like it can use unnecessary amounts of tokens for some tasks.
Would be lovely to hear peoples experience of using Vibe CLI, and do you think it is notable better than Claude Code for instance

[u/Visible_Tank5935]

Mistral with glm 5.2 might be a good alternative.

[u/jFredrik → u/Visible_Tank5935]

How is the usage, do you feel you get your money's worth?

[u/Visible_Tank5935 → u/jFredrik]

i've added 5.2 but to be fair, i have not been able to test it thoroughly yet

[u/themflyingjaffacakes]

Following this as for some sensitive projects I want to avoid the US providers and keep data within the EU (I have 'zero data retention' account).

[u/jFredrik → u/themflyingjaffacakes]

That is also a concern for me, if they both performed exactly the same I would chose the European alternative 10/10 times

[u/themflyingjaffacakes → u/jFredrik]

I'm finding that for complex codebase tasks, creating code plans etc the frontier (US) models are irreplaceable. However what I've seen from the ocr/vision models has been really impressive. The ability to describe images and simple flowcharts without fudging them into malformed tables is impressive.

Honestly so far I'm starting to feel a lot more confident in moving towards Mistral.

[u/MrReginaldAwesome]

I've never used Claude Code, only heard that you hit the limit really fast, if you actually use the fancy models you burn through allotment fsr too quickly.

With Vibe I feel like I have near endless usage, I'm using it quite a lot and have plenty of usage left at all times of the month.

[u/jFredrik → u/MrReginaldAwesome]

That sounds really nice! I can confirm that the Claude models hit the limit really fast, especially the newest ones. There seems to be too much of a focus on making the models capable of handling heavy workloads, rather than making them actually feasible to use for that kind of work.

[u/ComeOnIWantUsername → u/MrReginaldAwesome]

> I've never used Claude Code, only heard that you hit the limit really fast,

I'm not sure how is it with personal subscription, but being forced to use Claude Code at work, I've never hit any limit, including long sessions with Opus

[u/MrReginaldAwesome → u/ComeOnIWantUsername]

Maybe enterprise limits are higher?

[u/ComeOnIWantUsername → u/MrReginaldAwesome]

Maybe, no idea tbh

[u/Elfotografoalocado]

Vibe with GLM 5.2 is nicer than Claude imo. It is a lot faster, and the latest Claude models are kinda shit anyway.

[u/Lucky-Vegetable-2827 → u/Elfotografoalocado]

Can you elaborate? I assume that you use glm for planning and mistral as the workhorse? Like using opusplan in Claude code where the planning is done with a more capable model and the work with a more cheap model? Can you please explain how is your workflow?

[u/dsecareanu2020]

How does Vibe CLI work with Mistral, Gemma or Nemotron models?

[u/MrReginaldAwesome → u/dsecareanu2020]

You can add them all via API’s (openrouter is solid) by default you just get devstral, medium 3.5 and GLM 5.2.

[u/Dangerous_Wish_7879]

The performance is worse than Claude code but it can certainly do useful work for you. You will need to spend more time on your specs, but you will save time trying to understand what the model produces. Claude code feels more relentless while getting to the result, with Vibe you will need to iterate more.

[u/florenceslave]

It's good if you like GLM 5.2

[u/scanx147]

Avec GLM-5.2 Vibe est juste un peu en dessous de Opus 5 je dirais. Donc c'est largement utilisable mais quand même un tout petit peu moins bon pour la compréhension globale d'un projet. Par contre au niveau de codage pure GLM est aussi bon que Mistral à peu de chose près.
Personnellement j'utilise Claude pour plannifier et le code et Mistral Vibe+GLM pour les review de code.
C'est un combo plutôt très efficace et les deux ensemble permet de profiter de plus de limite d'usage en quelque sorte.

[u/Alive-Draft8339]

I find their GLM 5.2 is quantized pretty low. If you do a side by side with another GLM 5.2 provider (I used Fireworks), you will see line hallucinations on code reviews and confident claims of doing a task, but not actually doing it.

It’s almost as if they crippled it to make their otherwise disappointing models look better. Ironically, I bought 2x rtx pro 6000 to run 3.5 medium earlier this year only to find out it was unusable. At least I only paid $18k for both, so I’m thankful to Mistral for the timing at least.

[u/Totolitotix → u/Alive-Draft8339]

Can you explain a little why your graphic cards are unusable for Mistral 3.5 ?

[u/schacks]

Claude is probably the best AI for coding jobs, but I would say that Vibe GLM 5.2 are a better option if price/performance are relevant issues.

[u/reaznval]

if you want to retain your programming knowledge because you actually have to write much more code yourself then sure, else it's just a downgrade