Not every task needs Claude Fable 5 at $50/M output tokens. DeepSeek V4 and GLM 5.2 deliver frontier-class results at 5–10× lower cost.
DeepSeek V4
$1/$4 API. Open weights for self-hosting. Best for English-heavy coding, math, and bulk summarization. Text-first — add GPT 5.6 for images.
GLM 5.2
$4/$16 API. Best bilingual CN/EN. Partial open weights. Ideal for APAC customer support and localization pipelines.
Hybrid routing pattern
Route 90% of traffic to DeepSeek V4 or GLM 5.2. Escalate hard failures to Claude Fable 5 or Fugu Ultra. Typical savings: 60–80% on inference bills.
Self-hosting
DeepSeek V4 via Ollama/vLLM on a single A100 handles dev team loads. GLM open weights via Hugging Face for CN-compliant on-prem.
