which hosted model is actually worth paying for

[routecraft]

I'd approach it in a boring order. Before rebuilding anything, I'd test one clean baseline with Mistral and compare from there. A lot of these threads end up being one bad config plus a pile of conclusions drawn from it.

[routecraft]

That matches what I was seeing. I ended up in about the same place using llama.cpp. Worth rechecking your defaults though, because one bad assumption can make the rest of the thread look confusing.