OpenCode Review 2026: Is It Free, What It Costs and How It Compares

Most people who search for OpenCode want one answer first: does it cost money? The program does not, and the model behind it usually does. OpenCode describes itself as an open source agent that helps you write code in your terminal, IDE or desktop. It connects to more than 75 LLM providers, including local models, and it can run several agents in parallel on one project. Toolradar lists both OpenCode and Claude Code in its directory, so you can check each listing against the vendor page.

This review is for developers who want to pick the model themselves, and for team leads who need the bill before anyone installs the tool. It covers the three ways to pay for models, what each one caps, the free models and their data terms, and the cases where a flat-rate plan is the better buy.

OpenCode is an open source AI coding agent released under the MIT license. The license text sits in the public GitHub repository, so anyone can use, copy and modify the software without paying a license fee. What you install is the agent. What you pay for is the model it talks to.

Three interfaces run the same agent: a terminal interface, a desktop app and an IDE extension. The model layer is what sets OpenCode apart from a single-vendor tool. You can point it at a Claude, GPT, Gemini or open model, with your own key or through OpenCode's paid routes, and switch between them. That matters when a cheap model can handle a rename and a frontier model is needed for the refactor.

Setup has two steps: install the agent, then choose how the model is paid for. With your own key, you give OpenCode the provider's key, and the provider bills the tokens directly while OpenCode adds no charge. With Go, you create an account, subscribe, paste your API key and run /models in the terminal interface to see the Go list. Only one member per workspace can hold a Go or Go Plus subscription, which matters for teams.

Day to day, the model is a per-task choice, so your cost follows the model you pick. The only reliable way to forecast a month is to read the price of each model on the route you use. The sections below do that arithmetic for a light month and a heavy month, so you can see where the bill starts to matter.

OpenCode has no price of its own, so the question is which model route you pay on. Each route has its own price list, and the routes behave differently as usage grows.

Own key: the provider bills tokens at its list rates, and OpenCode adds nothing. Claude Haiku 5.5 is $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens for prompts up to 100K tokens, and $0.50 and $2.50 above that, per the Zen pricing table, checked October 10, 2026.

Zen: the starter top-up is $20, and there is no monthly fee. The home page shows a $1.23 card processing fee on that top-up and says requests are billed with no markup beyond card fees. The docs describe the card fee as 4.4% plus $0.30 per transaction, a formula that can differ slightly from the home page figure. Auto top-up reloads the balance when it falls to $5, and an admin can set a monthly spend limit. Read the Zen home page and the Zen docs before you turn auto top-up on.

Go: Go costs $10 a month and Go Plus costs $40 a month. Both use the same token prices, and usage limits are monthly dollar amounts per model. Each model's 5-hour limit is 20% of its monthly figure, and its weekly limit is 50%, per the Go docs, checked October 10, 2026. Claude Haiku 5.5 has a $15 monthly limit on Go and $60 on Go Plus, and it is the only Claude model on the Go list.

Free models: OpenCode lists several models as free for a limited time. The Zen docs say that during a free period, collected data may be used to improve some of them, so read each model's terms before sending client code through one.

Methodology: we read the vendor pages on October 10, 2026: OpenCode Go, the Zen and Go docs, the MIT license in the OpenCode repository, Claude's pricing page, Cursor's pricing page, GitHub Copilot plans and the Apache 2.0 license of Aider. The scenarios below are arithmetic on those list prices, with no prompt caching and no quality test, because Dupple has no test lab.

OpenCode fits a developer who wants to choose the model, not the vendor. If you already hold an OpenAI or Anthropic key, or you want an open model on a cheap route, the software adds no cost and no lock-in. A light month of Haiku 5.5 at 5 million input and 0.5 million output tokens comes to $0.75, so a solo developer can test the tool for under a dollar of model usage. For free model access outside OpenCode, see the free LLM APIs guide.

Teams should price it differently. Zen's workspaces are free for teams only as part of the beta, and the docs say pricing details will follow. Admins can set monthly spend limits per member, which helps keep a team inside a budget.

OpenCode is a weaker fit when you want one flat, predictable bill. A flat monthly plan such as Claude Code on Claude Pro or Cursor Pro gives one fixed price within its usage limits, whatever the token volume. It is also a poor match if you need Sonnet or another Claude model without your own API key or a Zen balance, because Go's only Claude model is Haiku 5.5. For the Claude-only comparison, read OpenCode vs Claude Code.