A backend engineer conducted a thorough, three-week evaluation of 10 AI coding models by running them through five real-world coding tasks reflecting typical backend development work. The engineer scored each model on correctness, code quality, documentation, and handling of edge cases, while also tracking cost per million tokens. The study revealed a bimodal market: affordable models ($0.25-$0.35 per million tokens) that deliver 85-90% of the best quality, and premium models costing 5-10x more with incremental quality gains. The engineer uses a routing system to select models based on task complexity, defaulting to cheaper models for simpler tasks and premium reasoning models for complex algorithmic problems, achieving a balance of cost and quality in production.
Use Case
Opening the operator briefing
Pulling the full operator breakdown, tooling context, and verification notes.