Alternatives or cheaper way to access GPT-5 thinking?
I love GPT-5 Thinking, it takes its time but it gets me the best results, even compared to Claude Opus Research for example. But, currently, I have two subscriptions, one to claude for claude code which seems like the best coding agent by far, and one to OpenAI for the GPT-5 thinking chatbot. I wanna get it down to under $20/month. Are there any other alternatives to GPT-5 thinking or just platforms that get me cheaper access to it? I honestly don't really care about image generation or the myriad of other options that OpenAI provides, I just want a low cost reliable alternative that gets me GPT-5 Thinking.
Try the API.
If no knowledge, use via Cursor.
You get extra access quota to it between Codex CLI and ChatGPT. Codex CLI has improved dramatically in just the last few days. Have you tried it recently?