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title: The best model is becoming a surprisingly bad default
author: Giacomo Balli
published: 2026-08-22
url: https://BigBalli.com/blog/the-best-model-is-becoming-a-surprisingly-bad-default
tags: AI, Startups, Product, Business
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# The best model is becoming a surprisingly bad default

*By Giacomo Balli* | *Published: August 22, 2026*

The best model is becoming a surprisingly bad default.

I was about to tokenmaxx my Claude weekly quota, so I switched to Sonnet 4.5.
I expected a noticeable downgrade.

Instead: super cheap, super fast, and with the right guidance, just as good as Opus for most of what I was doing. And far less nagging and babysitting.
That last part matters more than benchmarks suggest.

We tend to compare models by maximum capability. Businesses should care about capability per dollar, per second, and per unit of attention.

A founder generating a product spec does not need the model that can solve the hardest reasoning problem in the benchmark suite. They need one that gets the spec right quickly, follows instructions, and costs almost nothing to iterate with.

Models are advancing so quickly that yesterday's frontier becomes today's commodity before we update our habits. Tons of AI spend is probably paying for capability nobody is actually using.

Frontier models still matter when the problem earns them.
For everything else, model selection is becoming an economics decision, not an intelligence contest.

[Discuss on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7505022576633507841)

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**Tags:** AI, Startups, Product, Business

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