But they are getting dramatically better.

What's the point of a crazy cheap model if it's shit ?

I code most of the time with haiku 4.5 because it's so good. It's cheaper for me than buying a 23€ subscription from Anthropic.

The crazy cheap models may be adequate for a task, and low cost matters with volume. I need to label millions of images to determine if they're sexually suggestive (this includes but is not limited to nudity). The Gemini 2.0 Flash Lite model is inexpensive and performs well. Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite is also good, but not noticeably better, and it costs more. When 2.0 gets retired this June my costs are going up.