I recall recent work [ACE](https://www.arxiv.org/abs/2510.04618) and [GEPA](https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.19457) where models get improved by adapting and adopting different kinds of prompt. The improvements will be expected to be more generalized than fine-tuning.
It is not. It's a terrible comparison. Qwen, deepseek and other Chinese models are known for their 10x or even better efficiency compared to Anthropic's.
That's why the difference between open router prices and those official providers isn't that different. Plus who knows what open routed providers do in term quantization. They may be getting 100x better efficiency, thus the competitive price.
That being said not all users max out their plan, so it's not like each user costs anthropic 5,000 USD. The hemoragy would be so brutal they would be out of business in months