Moving from Claude to Proton Lumo
For the last couple of years I've been using Anthropic's Claude LLMs1 for helping with code – mostly PHP and bash scripting. I've been accessing Claude through a family Kagi subscription.
Kagi is probably my most-used subscription, as it removes so many frustrations with "free" search engines like Google and DuckDuckGo, while also allowing some great customisations (e.g. ranking sites down etc).
As well as their "Search" subscriptions, Kagi also offers Kagi Assistant, allowing access to all of the so-called "Frontier" LLMs out there. Their privacy policy was part of the draw:
When you use the Assistant by Kagi, your data is never used to train AI models (not by us or by the LLM providers), and no account information is shared with the LLM providers. By default, threads are deleted after 24 hours of inactivity.
At the same time, as part of my paid Proton account, I've been using their Lumo product for the past year. It's available for free, but paid "Plus" accounts have access to their higher-end Max LLMs. They run their own servers in Germany just for Lumo:
Because of legal uncertainty around Swiss government proposals to introduce mass surveillance — proposals that have been outlawed in the EU — Proton is moving most of its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland. Lumo will be the first product to move.
There's an article titled Lumo privacy and security model where more can be read on the subject.
Initially, the models Proton was using were very weak, and no comparison to Claude. So I'd just use it for day-to-day non-technical questions. However, with their recent Lumo 2.0 upgrade, that's changed completely. They're now using powerful models including GLM 5.2 which are much more competitive, and I've found that I can replace Claude for everything, even writing code.
To the point that this morning I've removed the "Ultimate" from my Kagi subscription, dropping $15/month back down to "Professional". This means I no longer have access to frontier models. So long, Claude, and thanks for all the fish.
Now it's Lumo all the way. Also, the cat is cute.
Large Language Models. I refuse to call them "AI".↩