Last updated: July 2025
How I Code with AI on a budget/free
My Browser Setup: The Free AI Buffet
First things first, I have a browser open loaded with tabs pointing to the free tiers of powerful AI models. Why stick to one when you can get multiple perspectives for free? My typical lineup includes:
At least one tab of OpenAI Playground. If you set your account's data settings to allow OpenAI to use your data for model training, you get free tokens to use on GPT-4.5, o3, and other models.
At least one tab but more like three of Google Gemini AI Studio (Gemini 2.5 Pro/Flash are often free and unlimited here).
Also, try Google Gemini 2.5 Pro (different than AI Studio, has better image generation and deep research; I always have a couple tabs of this along with a couple tabs of AI Studio).
Also, try Google Gemini 2.5 Pro (different than AI Studio, has better image generation and deep research; I always have a couple tabs of this along with a couple tabs of AI Studio). Couple tabs of Poe.com usually set to Claude 4 or o4-mini for its free daily credits on premium models.
Several tabs of OpenRouter, set to several models, some free models, some not.
At least one tab for ChatGPT (the free version is still useful).
At least one tab for Perplexity AI, especially good for research-heavy questions.
At least one tab for Deepseek (v3 and r1 are free on their web interface, though watch the context limit).
One tab for Grok.com. Good, free and seemingly unlimited for general use and deep research/image editing. I mainly use the deep research feature, similar to perplexity.
Phind is another free one, it tries to show you flowcharts/diagram visuals.
lmarena.ai offers free access to Claude Opus 4 and Sonnet 4 and others. Free Opus 4 is so good.
Claude.ai - Free but sometimes so limited it's annoying to use, so I use other sites/ways to access Claude like Cody extension, Copilot, etc.
⚠️ Important Disclaimer about Grok ▼ Grok offers free compute and uncensored image generation, which can be useful when other models' safety systems interfere with legitimate tasks. However, it is run by someone who may be manipulating the company to promote Nazi-adjacent views and misinformation, possibly attempting to sway users in that direction. Reports indicate that Grok has been instructed to lie about historical atrocities, including topics such as genocide in Africa. While the misinformation appears to be mostly on X, if you keep in mind to restrict usage to coding or be cautious knowing it might be programmed with questionable motives, it can occasionally be useful.
A smarter, cheaper workflow: Focused Context
When you use AI in web chat's (the chat interfaces like AI Studio, ChatGPT, Openrouter, instead of thru an IDE or agent framework) are almost always better at solving problems, and coming up with solutions compared to the agents like Cline, Trae, Copilot.. Not always, but usually.
When you use things like Cursor, Cline, Roo Code for everything, they are sending tons of text to the AI about how to use their tools, how to use or activate MCP server stuff, edit files, etc it "dumbs it down" too much. It gets confused. People end up paying for the most expensive best models to do everything and even that isn't enough to get over the dumbing down effect from the AIs getting tons of unneeded information unrelated to your problem.
So when that happens, I use my tool to generate the right context to solve my problem. Then I paste it into one of the many AI web chat's (sometimes more than one, since they sometimes give different answers) and just ask it questions or ask it to code review, to try to figure out why x is happening when y is happening...etc then when it figures out a solution.. i have it write a prompt for Cline or another agent type thing to do the actual file edits. GPT 4.1 can handle this just fine and I have unlimited. No reason to be wasting Claude credits to edit files. No reason to be sending Claude a bunch of crap it doesn't need making it dumb. I can use Claude to plan out anything or fix really hard problems, cheap, using Openrouter web chat then just paste it back in Cline and let it run.
After doing this for a while, you really get a feel for which models excel at which types of tasks.
How AI Code Prep Helps (Example Prompt Structure): Can you help me figure out why my program does x instead of y? Then, AI Code Prep GUI (for Windows, Mac, Linux, and web) steps in. It recursively scans your project folder (subfolders, sub-subfolders, you name it) and grabs the code, formatting it nicely for AI like this: The context block generated by AI Code Prep looks like this: Can you help me figure out why my program does x instead of y? fileName.js:
... the contents of the file..
nextFile.py:
import example
...etc
fileName.js: ... the contents of the file.. nextFile.py: import example...etc Can you help me figure out why my program does x instead of y? It writes it twice if you have that option enabled, which helps get the AI to focus better on your question/prompt. You can choose to have it on top, bottom, or both. OpenAI claims this helps, I haven't really tested to see if that's true but it seems logical. On Windows, you just right-click somewhere inside your project folder (or on the folder itself) and select "AI Code Prep GUI" from the context menu (look at the screenshots on the site). A GUI window pops up, usually with the right code files pre-selected. It smartly tries to skip things you likely don't need, like node_modules , .git , etc. If its guess isn't perfect, you can easily check or uncheck files. This is super useful when your project is huge and blows past an AI's context limit. You can manually curate exactly what the AI needs to see. The problem with many coding agents like Cline, Github Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf, etc., is that they often send either WAY too much context or WAY too little. This is why they can seem dumb or ineffective sometimes. Sometimes, you just gotta do things yourself, use a tool like mine to select the files yourself, but it helps auto-select the code files while skipping the stuff you probably don't need (but still have the option to add what you want with the checkboxes) and then dump that curated context into several AIs (especially the free web ones!). Sure, there are other context-generating tools, but many are command-line only, or need a public GitHub repo link. What if your code is private? What if you want to keep it local? What if you prefer checkboxes on a GUI? For something like this a GUI makes sense.
Note: This page isn't updated with all the latest AI Code Prep GUI features, check wuu73.org/aicp for latest major upgrade