> Claude is the de-facto SWE model now, yes you could use an open model but you would always be wondering if Claude would do better,

In my testing (incredibly similar workflows, moving around between claude code and cursor), I haven't found that much difference between Sonnet and GLM-5.3/flash.

Sonnet seems lazier, but has better prompt adherence, and is constantly telling me it can't do things, while GLM will just Find A Way to do whatever I've asked for.

I really appreciate being able to see GLM's thinking tokens, as I can head it off quicker. Claude's a little harder to steer, but the integration in Claude code makes it much easier to leave it running on things overnight, which is hard to get working properly in Cursor.

Overall, I'm not sure Anthropic have that much of a moat, in coding particularly. This seems weird to me, as they have so much more usage data that's hard to replicate.

> like using Duck Duck or some other Search engine

The difference between Anthropic's models and alternatives is not as big as Google Search vs other search engines

Google search is shit these days, depending on what you are trying to find.