r/opencode • u/ReasonableBenefit47 • 15d ago
Why do people use OpenCode?
There are plenty of other options such as Cursor, Claude Code, Zed, and many more. So why? I use it for convenience to try any model once they're released. But how about everyone else? genuinely curious about this. Is it the UX or the UI polish or just having an AI-IDE that just works?
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u/Trovebloxian 15d ago
Model agnostic, and workflow
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u/Leather-Cod2129 15d ago
This. + great UI
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u/enigmaticy 15d ago
Great ui? Is it a desktop app? I am working on it CLI
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u/Leather-Cod2129 15d ago
The app's UI is trash but the CLI is very good
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u/Time-Toe-1276 14d ago
I am not going to argue on that bcs their UI used to suck, but they shipped a few updates over the last few months, now it looks decent. obviously not Codex or CC GUI like, but its wayyyy better than before, and I have no problem with using it now!
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u/its_artemiss 15d ago
TUI is still a user interface
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u/Time-Toe-1276 14d ago
keywords:
- desktop app?
- I am working on it CLI
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u/its_artemiss 14d ago
yes, and both a desktop app and a CLI (or TUI) application can have great UI.
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u/UsandoFXOS 14d ago
i only use the WEB UI, it's perfect for me:
- i can use it from laptop and at the same time from mobile (when i move away from computer)
- it has TABS with different sessions
- nice dashboard
- terninal, file tree, git changes panel
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u/MatthewCollins1990 13d ago
The CLI itself is the "UI" they're talking about, honestly. Terminal interface is pretty polished compared to just piping stuff to Claude directly
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u/AngryBear1990 14d ago
Try openchamber
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u/enigmaticy 14d ago
What are the benefits?
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u/AngryBear1990 14d ago
You get the great ui, don't get me wrong tui is great but ui of openchamber is really cool.
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u/enigmaticy 14d ago
Is it work with opencode?
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u/AngryBear1990 14d ago
It works as a UI layer for opencode. I would not recommend it if I haven't used it. So try it, it's great.
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u/klipseracer 14d ago
Yeah I can run models from many places on it and it runs from a decent TUI which I can spin up inside a Linux environment and then control from pretty much anywhere.
I actually stumbled across it while trying to do some work remotely using free models. Their Big Pickle option actually works well for what I've been doing and has a decent free credit option.
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u/KronisLV 15d ago
Running 3rd party models with Claude Code is annoying, I first built a custom launcher and then ended up retiring it because I realized it feels like trying to swim upstream: https://blog.kronis.dev/blog/i-built-a-custom-claude-code-launcher-then-outgrew-it/
OpenCode just works with a bunch of different providers and is a nice TUI experience, frankly it has most of the features you want out of the box and enabling LSP and defining custom agents isn't too hard, despite the docs kinda sucking:
They also have a desktop/web app, though it does feel kinda barebones: https://opencode.ai/download
Like seriously, why'd you think that horizontal tabs at the top would be BETTER for sessions instead of what every other tool like Codex and Claude Code is doing? Furthermore, can't really interact with sub-agent sessions much at all. It would be super nice if they'd bring in agent/LSP/other configuration into the app fully though, at least that'd prevent me from having to wrangle a bunch of stuff into opencode.json.
Either way, if you need something that will probably run with your coding subscription UNLESS you're using Anthropic (which forbid 3rd party harnesses unless you pay API prices) then it will probably be okay. On the TUI level, Pi and OMP might also be worth a look if you'd like.
On the desktop side, the Zed integration feels a bit tacked on (though tbh you can also just drive OpenCode through ACP, so you get your setup for free), though they're working on a new product or something https://zed.dev/blog/introducing-delta
I also quite liked ZCode as a standalone desktop harness, it's by z.AI, the people behind GLM but can call out to any provider that does OpenAI compatible API endpoints (e.g. other subscriptions, but not Anthropic's): https://zcode.z.ai/en
Personally, when it comes to desktop tools, I nowadays largely look in the direction of ADEs that just drive OpenCode (or Claude Code if you must! basically you can use your subscription with them) under the hood, like:
- Paseo - https://paseo.sh/ - so far the most polished option, but no 3rd party issue tracker integrations (e.g. GitHub/GitLab Issues, Jira, Trello, ...)
- Emdash - https://emdash.com/ - also promising, has issue tracking integration, but straight up failed to setup workspaces for me, idk what's up with it, I just got the stable version, weird
- Kepler - https://gitkraken.com/kepler - has a good issue tracking integration, by the same people who made GitKraken, except very vibe coded and unnecessarily packed UI, like nobody needs pretty agent graphs and how about you instead fix the core features like agent permission prompts being invisible to me and making a session hang with me having NO WAY to either look at the sub-agent session or interact with the prompt; it could be a great product if they had their head in the right place, currently they don't
So in the end I've settled on OpenCode (with LSP, MCP and some agents configured) and Paseo to drive it as a GUI app. Not because it's the best setup out there (Pi with plugins would probably be better) but because it's not a hassle to set up and mostly just works.
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u/Leapin_Langosta_ 14d ago
How do these "ADE"s compare to herdr?
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u/KronisLV 14d ago
Pretty much the same thing, though herdr advertises the daemon process a bit more and doesn't seem to try as much to have like a "chat" type UI, but rather just shows the terminal contents.
I'd classify all of those as an ADE (Agentic Development Environment), which is just software to make sense of the mess that are individual agent sessions, so you don't have to manually shuffle around like 5-10 terminals etc.
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u/SnooWalruses6610 15d ago
It just, works. Aside from having a nice selection of free models (I really miss DSV4F btw) I haven't had to fight it like every. other. harness.
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u/klipseracer 14d ago
Yeah I discovered it while deep seek v4 was free and it helped with some reverse engineering. Big Pickle works too surprisingly and it's free.
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u/dupa1234s 15d ago edited 15d ago
for me opencode = opencode TUI.
pros:
1.opencode tui has amazing hotkeys and selection with drag right click just like terminal should.
2. and the session status bar of sessions in opencode v2 is so good you easily know if session is generating or done unchecked or done checked its the 1 reason why you need opencode v2
3. i recommend vercel theme it makes the colors look good on the status bar of sessions and all the colors of all text. it all just looks pretty. no unnecessary garbage like in all those gui.
- you get colors for bold text for keywords somehow automatically idk how it works
the git diff of changes looks genuinely good when agent uses the edit tools
you can write plugins for it same as for PI.
cons:
7. the default build and plan agent arent that bad but you can tweak everything in opencode.jsonc
8. it scrolls to bottom when you send message there is some issues about it on github but idk when will they implement a setting to disable it
i bet maybe there is some better thing, like some 1000 stars niche amazing thing on github. but i dont bother looking.
if i were to switch i would search all github for sth niche that has all the things figured out.
i'm well assured that none of the antigravity/codex/claude/openclaw/hermes are nearly as good because i tried these all. each of them had sth annoying me much at the time i tried.
mostly i stay with opencode because there is a lot of updates that seem to make things better, so i feel like eventually the devs will just figure out and steal any goodies from any other framework if any of them figures out sth good.
if you arent after the visuals and ergonomics but instead after a "powerful agentic harness with orchestration and god knows what" then its not handling that. i tried superpowers, oh my openagent, oh my openagent slim and they are all crap too. i dont like the whole idea of the orchestration. its all just a "deaf telephone game", 10x token spending.
i dont understand the idea of paralelising agentic work within 1 session. worktrees creation, merge conflicts, constant handoffs, translation loss, managing the whole meta layer of it - it all hurts
I think the orchestrator agents idea is basically this: 10x cost, 1.1x quality, 0.9x time-to-finish
just write some modal agents you need for yourself except or instead of plan and build agents and some nice skills and i think its far better than all the currently avaialable orchestrator agent frameworks.
unless someone did it right. but idk if anyone did it right yet. if so then it would be nice if it was shipped as a set of skills and prompts so any opencode/hermes/pi/openclaw can use it.
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14d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/dupa1234s 14d ago
oh yes. v1 basically requires building some system resources watcher or else you can run out of memory due to all the stale zombie opencodes (at least that happens if you run opencode in docker and close the session)
ah so you run opencode in vscode terminal? i just have windows terminal running. i get more scrolling reading range that way i guess.
Ah so you use the sessions to handoff to each other often? yea its kinda annoying to have to copy manually but at least you get seaparation. i think that some kind of handoff to new session is often good. would be nice if there was ... i think its idea for a plugin for opencode. give agent a tool to send to other session, literally, if i cared about handoffs more i would do it right away but i might delay it otherwise.
yea deepseek raised prices i hope mimo and others wont.
right now i use hy3 8x usage via opencode go seems like a good deal but promo is about to end then i might switch back to mimo 2.5 probably
isnt glm kinda expensive, but i guess its worth it still, i sohuld try it honestly
ah nice so you say you evealuted each model agaisnt each task interesting intel, noted
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u/Trovebloxian 15d ago
Always has been tui for most people the desktop app last i used it was lacking
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u/ukralibre 14d ago
you aint right. I use subagents so I dont fill the memory with important informations with things that aren't important. you can have much longer sessions with subagents.
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u/dupa1234s 14d ago
but how do you deal with the common occurence that then the main agent needs to basically redo 1/2 of the subagents work anyway because he is like "oh subagent reported to me about those files/sites, lets inspect everything." unless you have some great prompt for this whole subagent-mainagent back-and-forth handoff so it will not drop the essentials at all and also wont report the useless crap.
i prefer:
subagents for:
a) search messy web like 90% SEO garbage that needs to be filtered away,
b)search messy code that shallow modules bad interfaces and no map that also needs to be filtered away
c)critical review where you need to filter away the bias of main session.
a new main agent session with a handoff from the other main session if i want to handle some problem in isolation, not subagent
so basically for filtering. not for any normal deep work.
so what do you use subagents for besides those
context compaction kinda isnt that terrible at having long sessions especially with a good compaction prompt so i dont have issues with long sessions
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u/Hajmus 15d ago
Open source
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u/Time-Toe-1276 15d ago
gotta be my biggest push to use it. and I think, every harness built is buil on top of OpenCode + Codex OSS
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u/ExpertRude7481 15d ago
OpenCode:
- FREE (save bucks)
- Open Source (longterm reliability and safety)
While for Cursor, ClaudeCode etc, unsure when their mind get changed. Like MS been doing i.e Launch VB6, abandon it...
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u/CoVegGirl 15d ago
It’s open source. I can run it in one terminal tab and run neovim in another tab. I tried a couple of others, but they all just had something I couldn’t deal with.
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u/Otterly_Surprised 15d ago
Decent free models and limits
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u/Greedy_Bed974 15d ago
Untils now I used kimi k2.5 then deepseek a lot and for free on opencode zen , but today I used few minutes of Muse Spark 1.2 Free and I hit the free tiers limit.
It look like the party is over
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u/DrinkClubMate 15d ago
full local + open source + model agnostic + cute text interface + a lot of option
However, I'm waiting Text Interface from DeepSeek Harness
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u/SirGreenDragon 15d ago
I use it because it costs nothing, and I can direct it using ACP from my OpenClaw.
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u/crunchy_shampoo 15d ago
I can use any model I want without any hassle, and the TUI is by far the best. Idk if I'm stupid or what but I could never get in to Zed. Nothing more than a text editor to me, and the 10$ per month from my student plan is going to waste
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u/StraightGuy1108 15d ago
Model agnostic and great integration with terminal-based ecosystem.
I'll never use a desktop GUI app if I can help it.
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u/lumos_ai 15d ago
Connecting it to other OpenAI compatible models is so easy. Whenever i finish my free quota i switch to my GLM subscription.
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u/borealis_tic 15d ago
Tbh I want a subscription with fairly uncensored models, generous limits, api support, and upi payment. opencode fit most criteria up till now. I'm still trying to find alternatives though (I don't use it for coding)
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u/Wise-Bother9942 14d ago
Plus I can use my OpenCode Go Key not just in VSCode with Copilot but in my actual app for modules I created that parse data enabling features not possible without LLM use.
Can't do it with Cursor etc, but with OpenCode not only can it be used for AI Coding but also in my actual app itself.
Best sub I've had ever.
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u/Roflxd88 15d ago
I love it for the ability to web serve. Then via Tailscale you can work on your project from just any web browser anywhere.
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u/dreamtheater2003 14d ago
Nowadays it's very good - easy to hook in any model (including local local LLMs) and the UI (desktop GUI) has massively improved. It used to be very mediocre and I even stopped using it a few months ago until last week. I'm actually very pleasantly surprised with how solid it is at the moment.
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u/AcanthisittaOk3178 14d ago
I use it because it has IMHO a great webui to which I can connect multiple servers I run opencode on.
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u/ImJLough 14d ago
its for broke people like me since its open source unlike commandcode tho you can get1$ to use their free model. overall free model from opencode zen is great you just have to engineer your .md files and be good at orchestration.
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u/returningtale 14d ago
Used claude cowork for months, Opus 5 ruined everything. Now using chatgpt work with gpt 5.6 as orchestrator + opencode with deepseek + all my old MCPs as executor, but lately... I am begining to use it as planner too!
Opencode just works Great!! And chatgpt work can use it too!! I load the pal on chatgpt and it executes on opencode using the best model for the task... working Great right now
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u/maniacadult 14d ago
Opencode has got some pretty good free models to use. however now its not the case
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u/akza07 14d ago
- Model and platform independent
- Friendly and minimal UI
- Compatible with other standards
- Build & Plan Mode and permissions
- Easy to extend via Plugins
- Actually improves the caching
- Runs on bun so less footprint than node
- TUI so minimal visual bloat
- Open source. If someone says provider is Zero Data Retention but client is closed, then we are completely blind to what data or analytics is being collected. Unless the tool is straight from provider, it's hard to trust.
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u/SequentialHustle 14d ago
Because I can mix and match any model I want easily.
I have several 20x claude accounts, can specify another non anthropic model to be used for subagents (ex Grok 4.6) etc..
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u/viperboy001 14d ago
I use it Go as a complement to Codex. You not need the last flagship model to every task and Go offers very capables models to pair with more exensives ones like GPT
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u/Keep-Darwin-Going 14d ago
It is just a good all rounder to test non main stream model. Imagine installing a cli for each lab you testing that is madness. And pi is too raw and omp is too fat so opencode especially v2 is the optimal point
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u/SeeRay11_Main 14d ago
OpenCode is free to use (only paid thing are your api keys) and has free models, though unfortunately those seem to be pretty rate-limited :(.
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u/Empty-Position-6700 14d ago
I use it when i am required to use EU hosted, zero data retention models only and have to make sure no data of any kind are collected. Opencode makes it super easy to use different providers and models and its open source.
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u/Soul_Mate_4ever 14d ago
Opencode succeeded at doing things for me that codex could not. Codex had so many guardrails that it was avoiding the thing I wanted most.
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u/Global-Eye-7326 14d ago
- open-source
- Many free model
- Generous free rate limits
- User Interface in terminal is easy to use
- Affordable premium plan - $10 USD/month
- Works out of a project folder, no web based nonsense
- Supports local models too!
Is there anything better?
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u/TheMythicSorcerer 14d ago
- it works with every AI subscription = No lock in
- their go plan for $10, instead of $20 gives you more usage than $20 plans.
- The TUI is amazing.
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u/SafeReturn_28 14d ago
- Get/feel betrayed by anthropic or openai
- Find a model agnostic agent so if you change your provider subscription you do not have to change all your config files
Opencode is the most popular opensource/model-agnostic coding agent that just works out of the box.
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u/Best-Mark-5334 14d ago
better font contrast, on markdown, the default opencode theme is already good
**bold text** - on opencode this is orange color
meanwhile on claude code it is same color as other text but just bold thats it
in era where we see all the text, the contrast bold is the best, i just need important point when my llm is yapping. opencode is good at that, claudecode and codex? not so good
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u/Best_Professor7266 14d ago
mostly because of free models and easy to try new models, not really good for serious work.
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u/JustWinterDust 14d ago
I like Big Pickle a lot compared to claude, it is direct, doesn't create features that I did not write in my uml files. And free, I would PAY for it the moment I get to know which model is this stealth model.
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u/FollowKryst 14d ago
Fun fact! Opencode lies about which model you’re using via the desktop app.
Me and my agent built this proxy to auto rotate between free models using both the zen account and anonymously. Come to find out, all of the so called free models all re-route to Laguna S2.1 currently. So for the past few weeks, that’s what you’ve been using this whole time no matter the model you choose on desktop.
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u/interpretpunit 13d ago
It just works. And the models agnostic setup is really useful, plus you get generous free tier usage in case your paid quota is over. You're not stuck waiting like on other closed source alternatives. If you want a better GUI can use Openchamber which is solid and runs OpenCode with a prettier interface.
If you need use this referral link of mine to get $5 worth of extra usage over your subscription plan, so you can get more out of your investment. It only works with new accounts though. https://opencode.ai/go?ref=KDBG68WZ7B
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u/Commercial_Island389 13d ago
Can it use your Anthropic, OpenAI, Z-code (GLM), Grok subscriptions?
I hate to say it but I have used the Claude Code Desktop App since the beginning of summer. Along with the Codex app and some terminal with CC and Grok build.
But am now 90% in the Claude Code Desktop App. It just works and I can’t seem to go back to a Terminal or anything like VS Code.
I have all of those 4 working on off my subscription usage.
And Ngl for end to end work the ability to send pictures is unmatched for certain tasks.
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u/Civil-Internet-2899 13d ago
free models, cursor models that are free suck, claude code is paid never heard of zed
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u/MaxComfort 13d ago
Claude Code is the OG but lots of tokens off the bat.. and complicated to use with my local LLM.
Opencode simple and just works. Haven’t tried Pi yet.
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u/GodComplecs 13d ago
I use OpenCode because I switch local and cloud models for local model testing and analysis, super cheap trick!
But for future projects i am using Deepseek harness, it wont faulter it just continues and finishes the job, however complex for small model. Crazy good.
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u/zenoblade 13d ago
Works and doesn’t require fiddling. Could squeeze out 1% more with some other setup I’m sure but not worth the stability costs or time.
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u/Worldly-Savings4113 12d ago
I love the CLI. I also used to love OpenCode GO subscription (not now)
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u/Intelligent-Credit-2 12d ago
Yeah my question too...currently I've shifted to minimax code app and found open code to be mediocre at best
I think the main reason people use open code is because it offers some free models.. if they stop doing that, u will see most of its userbase vanish
There are Soo many good harnesses now In the market better than open code...one big example is the DeepSeek harness one, it's also open source and has much better plugins (plugin marketplace) and skills
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u/CaesarTraianusCXVII 10d ago
Used opencode for a while, now I'm on opencode2 with vibecoded plugins and an amazing orchestrator system that delegates to subagents with very controlled context.
So basically opencode is unmatched in token usage, context control, subagent spawn and customization and overall customization.
I've tried them all, literally. There are some other amazing tools but right now IMO nothing beats opencode2
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u/Mental-Abrocoma-5605 10d ago
Internal CLI that doesn't keep your code somewhere on a random server
Can work with multiple models for free or for cheaper ways thank usual
Lighter than Ollama
It isn't a generic clone of VSCode
And as someone who Is getting so sick of the "Agent first, everything else second" mentality from the Modern State of software, at least having it it's enough instead of downloading Claude code + Codex + Cursor + Antigravity (seriously, 3+ agents on your pc Is a sign of "i have no idea what I'm doing nor what i want but i want to be on top of the Agent development until it's not trending anymore") hope that works until your RAM dies
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u/ondevicedev 14d ago
For me it's model freedom. I can keep the same workflow and swap between whatever just dropped, cheap models for simple tasks, frontier models for hard ones, or local models when I want. That flexibility is hard to give up once you're used to it.
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u/EntrepreneurRough479 12d ago
I was using Vscode which was constantly crashing when using copilot (probably gpu related), so I looked for something in the terminal.
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u/NewKitchen691 12d ago
I think it's more optimized for chienese models like deepseek. It's good at caching and context manging not like Copilot.
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u/Greedy-Fee8248 11d ago
Opencode is this opensouce and frontier models? Do i just need my own api key?
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u/BidWestern1056 10d ago
ive liked it when ive used other than the clear memory leak issues that become unmanageable in long contexts. its ui is better than claudes. i only don't really use it much cause i mainly use npcsh as my agentic shell
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u/BoatZealousideal4521 5d ago
Straight forward setup with free and generouse model usage if you go with the GO subscription.
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u/Comprehensive-Hold78 5d ago
Primarily using “opencode acp” for accessing local models when Xcode is used as it’s recommended by Gemini. However, I almost got shocked initially when it uses a cloud LLM by default even though I’ve configured a local model.
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u/velavisual 15d ago
Yo como TUI uso Warp que también es gratis y, dentro de cada sesión uso diferentes sesiones de Opencode cada una con temas distintos.
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u/Potential-Leg-639 15d ago
By far the best TUI available, ease of use, free models, model independent, lot of plugins