I keep seeing two completely opposing takes. One is that Chinese models now dominate OpenRouter, that US startups are quietly switching to them, and that the cost difference is simply too large to ignore. The other is that these models are heavily censored, slow, weak in English, and not used seriously by many people. Neither take feels like the full picture. I used to rely mainly on Codex. After seeing so much discussion about Chinese models and agents, I gave them a shot. I use hy3 through WorkBuddy, and I noticed it doesn’t only offer its own models. Pretty much anything available globally works too, like GPT-6-Astra and Gemini-3.5-Flash. For 80% of my work they handle it, and handle it well. Codex is honestly overkill at this point. So I probably won’t renew it this time. I’m also looking forward to trying GLM-5.3, Kimi K3, and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash. So, for those of you outside China who have regularly used models such as DeepSeek, Qwen, or GLM, or agents such as WorkBuddy or Trae, what has your actual experience been like? What do you use them for, and how do they compare with ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini? If you stopped using them, what made you stop? I’d especially like to hear from non-developers. What everyday tasks do you use them for: writing, studying, travel planning, translation, cooking, or something else? I’m interested in more than just coding use cases. I’m trying to look past the PR and sweeping claims on both sides. I’m mainly interested in firsthand experiences. submitted by /u/EmetInteractive
Originally posted by u/EmetInteractive on r/ArtificialInteligence
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