I Spent Two Weeks Testing Chinese AI Models and Got Surprised

Let me be real with you. Before I started digging into this stuff, I was the kind of bootcamp grad who just defaulted to GPT-4o for everything. That's what my instructors used, that's what my classmates used, so I never questioned it. Then I accidentally stumbled onto a thread about Chinese AI models and my brain kind of broke.

What followed was two weeks of testing, comparing pricing pages, and genuinely geeking out. I figured I should write this up because I wish someone had handed me a simple breakdown before I spent my own money figuring this out.

How I Even Got Into This Rabbit Hole

It started with a Slack message. Someone posted a link saying DeepSeek could do basically the same thing as GPT-4o for like 97% less money. I clicked expecting a clickbait article and instead fell down a hole I haven't climbed out of yet.