Good for / not for
- Developers who want to move between models — cheap ones for routine edits, expensive ones for hard problems.
- Anyone who has been rate-limited by a single provider and wants somewhere else to go mid-project.
- Terminal users who want an agent that is still shipping, unlike Aider.
- People who would rather pay per token than hold another monthly subscription.
- Anyone who wants a graphical editor or a single polished vendor experience.
- People who want the tool to make model choices for them; the freedom is the point, and it is also the work.
- Teams that need an agent to respect project conventions unsupervised — reviewers report it ignoring stated ones.
What it actually does
OpenCode runs in your terminal, in your project directory. You describe what you want, it reads the files it needs, proposes edits and runs commands, in the same shape as any other coding agent. The difference is the layer underneath. Instead of being wired to one AI company, it can reach more than 75 providers, so the model is a setting rather than a constraint. You supply your own API keys and pay each provider directly. If you would rather not collect keys, the project runs an optional hosted gateway called Zen: one account, many models, billed per million tokens with no subscription attached, and six models offered at no cost. Either way nothing about your setup is locked to a vendor, and switching when a provider raises prices or throttles you does not mean switching tools. The project is MIT licensed and, at 205,312 stars, the most-starred agent covered here. Releases land most weeks; v1.18.29 shipped on 4 September 2026.
Run OpenCode with your own provider key, or with a Zen account.
With your own key, the provider bills you and OpenCode costs nothing. With Zen, you are billed per million tokens; when the balance falls below $5, Zen reloads $20 automatically.
From the vendor's docsPricing and free-plan limits
Free tier: The CLI is free with no usage cap; Zen adds six models you can use at no cost.
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Open source | Free |
The agent itself is free forever. With your own keys, your only bill comes from the provider you chose. |
| Zen (hosted gateway) | Custom pricing |
Pure pay-as-you-go: there is no monthly fee and no free credit balance. When your balance falls below $5, Zen automatically reloads $20. |
Prices checked on Sep 6, 2026 against the vendor's pricing page. Plans change often — confirm before you pay.
Three honest limitations
- Provider rate limits bite in long sessions, and reviewers report switching models mid-project to get around them.
- It ignores stated project tooling out of the box — one reviewer asked for uv and got pip and venv anyway.
- An unrelated Alibaba code-review product shares the name, so searching for help returns results for the wrong OpenCode.
Alternatives
- Aider — Choose Aider instead if you want each edit committed to git automatically and do not mind a slower release cadence.
- Cline — Choose Cline instead if you want the same open licence and key freedom inside VS Code, with an approval prompt at every step.
- Zed — Choose Zed instead if you want an editor rather than a terminal, and a free tier that does not need an API key at all.
Getting started in 5 minutes
- Install the CLI from opencode.ai and run it inside a project directory.
- Either export an API key for a provider you already use, or create a Zen account and add credit.
- Pick a model — start with a cheap one while you learn what the agent does well.
- Give it one contained task, then read the diff before you accept it.
- Check what it reaches for: reviewers report it defaulting to pip and venv even when told to use uv.
OpenCode questions
- Is OpenCode free?
- Yes. The CLI is MIT licensed with no usage cap. You either pay a provider directly for tokens, or use Zen, which bills per million tokens with no subscription.
- What is Zen?
- An optional hosted gateway run by the project. One account reaches many models, billed per million tokens. Six models are free, and the balance auto-reloads $20 when it drops below $5.
- Why did the GitHub repository move?
- The organisation renamed from SST to Anomaly in mid-2026 and the repository moved to github.com/anomalyco/opencode. The old address redirects to the new one.
- OpenCode or Aider?
- Both are free terminal agents. OpenCode ships releases most weeks and reaches far more providers; Aider turns every edit into a git commit and has not tagged a release since August 2025.
- Do I need to understand model pricing to use it?
- Not to start — the six free Zen models cost nothing. But choosing between 75+ providers is the point of the tool, and you get more from it once you know roughly what each model costs.
Related reading
- Who Trains on Your Code? Copilot, Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT Compared
75 providers means 75 data policies. The comparison covers the four most people start with.
Sources
- Zen pricing and billing documentation
- GitHub repository (205,312 stars, v1.18.29 on 2026-09-04, moved from sst to anomalyco)
- OpenCode tool review — rate limits and tooling defaults
- Source code: MIT
Research-compiled, not hands-on tested. Compiled from official docs, the vendor's pricing page and community reviews as of Sep 6, 2026. We haven't tested it hands-on yet.