OpenCode vs Claude Code: open-source vs official terminal agent

Same shape, different bet

Both of these live in a terminal, both read your repo, edit files, and run commands in a loop until a task is done, and both will happily plan a change before touching anything. The resemblance stops at the surface. Claude Code is Anthropic's own agent, built to run its own Claude models well and not much else. OpenCode is a community project maintained by the SST team, released under the MIT license, and built to run whatever model you point it at, from a paid frontier API to something free or self-hosted.

That's really the whole decision in one sentence: pick Claude Code for a tight, official loop with one company's models, or pick OpenCode for a looser tool that doesn't care whose model is doing the work.

How each one actually works

Claude Code is a closed-source CLI, distributed as an npm package, that talks to Claude over Anthropic's own API. Anthropic also ships it as a VS Code extension and a JetBrains plugin, but the underlying binary and its agent loop, plan, edit, run tests, react to output, are the same wherever it's embedded. You don't configure which model runs it beyond choosing a Claude tier; the agent behavior and the model are one product.

OpenCode is a Go CLI with its own terminal UI, open on GitHub at sst/opencode. It talks to whichever provider you've configured in opencode.json, including Anthropic's own API if you want Claude models inside it, OpenAI, Gemini, DeepSeek, a local Ollama instance, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. It also does more out of the box than Claude Code does in the terminal alone: built-in LSP support so the agent sees the same diagnostics your editor would, a subagent system with a configurable nesting depth, and an MCP client for connecting external tools. The tradeoff is that all of that flexibility is also more to configure before a first run actually works well.

Pricing and how you pay

This is where the two tools stop looking similar at all. Claude Code's cost is really Claude's cost: Pro is around $20 a month and includes Claude Code access sharing a quota with Claude's web and desktop apps, while Max 5x and Max 20x scale the session allowance up for around $100 and $200 a month. Usage runs on a rolling 5-hour window stacked under a weekly cap, and neither Anthropic nor any third party publishes an exact message count for a given tier. The full breakdown is in the Claude Code pricing guide and the Claude usage limits guide.

OpenCode itself costs nothing. It's a free download, and what you pay for is whatever model you point it at. Bring your own API key to Anthropic, OpenAI, or another provider and you pay that provider's usual rates. OpenCode also runs OpenCode Zen, a curated pay-as-you-go marketplace of models at published per-token prices with no added markup, plus a handful of models Zen lists free. Point it at a local model through Ollama and the software cost is genuinely zero.

Model flexibility, in practice

Model choice is the real fork in the road. Claude Code's whole design assumes Claude: prompts, tool use, and the agent's planning behavior are tuned against Anthropic's own models, and there's no config option to swap in something else. That's a reasonable trade if you already want Claude doing the work and you'd rather not think about model selection at all.

OpenCode makes that choice yours, for better and worse. You can run Claude through it via an Anthropic key, switch to a cheaper model for routine edits and a stronger one for a hard refactor, or run something local for anything you don't want leaving your machine. The best local LLM for coding guide and the OpenAI API pricing guide are useful reading if you're weighing that kind of provider mix. The cost of that freedom is that OpenCode's output quality depends entirely on which model you picked; point it at a weak one and the agent loop is only as good as what's answering it.

Who each one fits

• You want Claude specifically, with the least setup between you and it: Claude Code is built for exactly that and nothing else.
• You're already paying for Claude Pro or Max for the chat app: Claude Code rides the same subscription, so there's no separate API bill to track.
• You want to try, mix, or switch models without changing tools: OpenCode's provider config is the whole point.
• You want to run something locally, for cost or for keeping code on your own machine: OpenCode connects to Ollama and similar setups; Claude Code does not.
• You want an agent with LSP-aware diagnostics or deep MCP and subagent configuration out of the box: OpenCode ships more of that by default, though Claude Code has its own subagent and hook system too, covered in the Claude Code subagents guide.
• You'd rather not manage API keys and billing yourself at all: a flat Claude subscription through Claude Code is simpler than provisioning and monitoring multiple provider accounts.

One place this touches NeverMetered directly: both tools are on the list of 19 supported integrations, with setup guides for Claude Code and OpenCode. If you're running OpenCode and want a model that isn't metered per token, or Claude Code work that's spilling past its 5-hour window, pointing either one at a flat-rate endpoint is a config change, not a rewrite. See current plans if that's relevant to how you're using either tool.