--- title: How Many Spoons Does Your AI Coding Tool Cost? | daily.dev description: AI coding agents can reduce developer effort, but vendor lock-in creates a hidden energy tax: teams get stuck on one vendor's model, can't benefit from... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/how-many-spoons-does-your-ai-coding-tool-cost--9tixdpv0g twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: How Many Spoons Does Your AI Coding Tool Cost? | daily.dev og:description: AI coding agents can reduce developer effort, but vendor lock-in creates a hidden energy tax: teams get stuck on one vendor's model, can't benefit from... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/how-many-spoons-does-your-ai-coding-tool-cost--9tixdpv0g og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/9tixDPV0g.png og:image:alt: How Many Spoons Does Your AI Coding Tool Cost? og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # How Many Spoons Does Your AI Coding Tool Cost? **[Kilo Blog](https://daily.dev/sources/kilo-ai-blog)** · 5 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary AI coding agents can reduce developer effort, but vendor lock-in creates a hidden energy tax: teams get stuck on one vendor's model, can't benefit from faster-moving open-weight alternatives, and lose time debugging opaque failures. The open-weight model market is accelerating rapidly — Kimi K3 (2.8T parameters), DeepSeek V4 (MIT license), and Qwen 3.8-Max all shipped within days of each other, with open-weight models now 4–7 months behind closed frontier labs (down from 6–10 months) and accounting for ~45% of tokens on major routing platforms. Open-source agents that support bring-your-own-API-keys and multi-model routing let teams adopt new models without rebuilding workflows. Kilo Code is presented as an example: Apache-2.0/MIT licensed, supporting 500+ models with zero inference markup, available in VS Code, JetBrains, CLI, and cloud, with 3M+ developers and 40 trillion tokens processed. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How far behind are open-weight AI models compared to closed frontier models now? The UK's AI Safety Institute measures the best open-weight models at four to seven months behind closed frontier labs on hard benchmarks, an improvement from six to ten months behind for most of the prior year, while running at a fraction of the cost of closed models. _Anyone weighing open versus closed models for coding work can track these shifts on daily.dev._ ### What license does Kilo Code use and how many models does it support? Kilo Code is open source under Apache-2.0 for its extension and MIT for its CLI, and it connects to more than 500 models with zero markup on inference. It runs in VS Code, JetBrains, the CLI, and the cloud, and has surpassed 3 million developers and 40 trillion tokens processed. _Developers comparing AI coding agents can follow tool details like this on daily.dev._ ### What share of AI model tokens now come from Chinese open-weight providers? Chinese open-weight providers account for roughly 45% of tokens flowing through major routing platforms, up from under 2% a year earlier. This shift followed releases such as Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 (2.8 trillion parameters, open-sourced in late July), DeepSeek V4 under an MIT license, and Qwen's 3.8-Max. _Teams tracking the open-weight model race can keep tabs on trends like this via daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Open weight models are here: more choice, more speed, less cost](https://daily.dev/posts/open-weight-models-are-here-more-choice-more-speed-less-cost-ke3nu27xr) · Kiro · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [What We Learned from 3 Million Downloads of Kilo Code](https://daily.dev/posts/what-we-learned-from-3-million-downloads-of-kilo-code-mxphp8car) · Kilo Blog · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [The State of Open Source AI — V1.0 · July 2026](https://daily.dev/posts/the-state-of-open-source-ai-v1-0-july-2026-gjzwgazbw) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#ai-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-coding) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/how-many-spoons-does-your-ai-coding-tool-cost--9tixdpv0g) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"How Many Spoons Does Your AI Coding Tool Cost?","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-many-spoons-does-your-ai-coding-tool-cost--9tixdpv0g","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-many-spoons-does-your-ai-coding-tool-cost--9tixdpv0g"},"datePublished":"2026-08-06T18:35:17.921Z","dateModified":"2026-10-15T02:22:09.727Z","description":"AI coding agents can reduce developer effort, but vendor lock-in creates a hidden energy tax: teams get stuck on one vendor's model, can't benefit from...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/ac8de31838d3de72416d40a63d7fcd30?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/ac8de31838d3de72416d40a63d7fcd30?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Kilo Blog","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Kilo Blog","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--x3pmrf8D--/f_auto,q_auto/v1774964071/logos/kilo-ai-blog?_a=BAMAMiWQ0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/kilo-ai-blog"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-many-spoons-does-your-ai-coding-tool-cost--9tixdpv0g","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"open-source,ai-coding","timeRequired":"PT5M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Kilo Blog","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/kilo-ai-blog"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"How Many Spoons Does Your AI Coding Tool Cost?"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-many-spoons-does-your-ai-coding-tool-cost--9tixdpv0g#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"How far behind are open-weight AI models compared to closed frontier models now?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"The UK's AI Safety Institute measures the best open-weight models at four to seven months behind closed frontier labs on hard benchmarks, an improvement from six to ten months behind for most of the prior year, while running at a fraction of the cost of closed models. 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