As a content creator producing technical articles in Bahasa Indonesia, I've spent the last year using Claude and ChatGPT for translation, research synthesis, and tone editing. The combined cost runs around $40/month — sustainable for my volume, but not for fellow creators in Southeast Asia working with thinner margins.
This year I started seriously evaluating Chinese-developed models: Qwen, GLM, and most recently Xiaomi's MiMo V2.5. The economic case is obvious — pricing 5 to 10 times cheaper than frontier Western models, with rate limits that don't choke at 50 concurrent requests.
The harder question is quality, specifically for Bahasa Indonesia.