Not having to specify files is a humongous feature for me. Having to remember which file code is in is half the work once you pass a certain codebase size.

Use /context <prompt> to have aider automatically add the files based on the prompt. It's been working well for me.

That sometimes work sometimes doesn’t and takes 10x time. Same with codex. I would have both and switch between them depending on what you feel will get it right better

Yeah, I tried CC out and quickly noticed it was spending $5+ for simple LLM capable tasks. I rarely break $1-2 a session using aider. Aider feels like more of a precision tool. I like having the ability to manually specify.

I do find Claude Code to be really good at exploration though - like checking out a repository I'm unfamiliar with and then asking questions about it.

Aider is a great tool. I do love it. But I find I have to do more with it to get the same output as Claude Code (no matter what LLM I used with Aider). Sure it may end up being cheaper per run, but not when my time is factored in. The flip side is I find Aider much easier to limit.

What are those extra things you have to do more of? I only have experience with Aider so I am curious what I am missing here.

With Claude Code you can at least type "/code" at any point to see how much it's spent, and it will show you when you end a session (with Ctrl+C) too.

The output of /cost looks like this:

  > /cost 
    ⎿  Total cost: $0.1331
       Total duration (API): 1m 13.1s
       Total duration (wall): 1m 21.3s

Aider shows how much you've spent after each command :-). It shows the cost of the command as well as the session.

After switching to Aider, I realized the other tools have been playing elaborate games to choose cheaper models and to limit files and messages in context, both of which increase their bills.

>I use Aider. It's awesome.

What do you use for the model? Claude? Gemini? o3?

Currently using Sonnet 3.7, but mostly because I've been too lazy to set up an account with Google.

Get an Openrouter account and you can play with almost all providers, I was burning money on Claude, tried V3 (blocked Deepseek provider for being flaky, let the laypeople mock them) and experimental and GA Gemini models.

Gemini 2.5 pro is my choice