The vendor keeps six models on its gateway at no charge, and they are enough to answer the only question that matters at this stage. Read the terms on them before you paste anything real: each is free while the lab behind it collects feedback, so the training opt-out is what you are trading. Two of them carry an explicit instruction in the docs not to send confidential data. For a scratch repository that is a fair deal; for client code it is not.
Anomaly · Pricing
opencode pricing: the client is free, the model is not
opencode is free software, so every price on this page buys a model rather than the tool. Seven routes reach one: your own hardware, your own API key, the vendor's pay-as-you-go gateway, its open-model subscription, a ChatGPT or Copilot seat you already pay for, or an enterprise deal. We checked that gateway's rates against the labs' own list prices — twenty-three of twenty-five matched to the cent.
Opens on a coding-agent day rather than a chat day: an agent re-sends the whole conversation every turn, so the input side is far larger than a chat workload and mostly cache reads. Anomaly publishes no per-developer spend figure, so the preset is calibrated against the only one anybody publishes — Anthropic's. Change them to your volume; every plan re-judges as you type.
API side uses the vendor's published per-token list prices with prompt caching modeled (chat apps resend conversation history every turn — set cache to 0 for a stack without caching). Thinking models bill hidden reasoning tokens at the output rate — that's real spend in both worlds.
- ChatGPT Go$8.00/mo break-even 4/day plan saves $155/mo
- ChatGPT Plus$20.00/mo break-even 10/day plan saves $143/mo
- ChatGPT Pro (5×)$100/mo break-even 49/day plan saves $62.72/mo
- ChatGPT Pro (20×)$200/mo break-even 98/day API saves $37.28/mo
Plans cap usage in rolling windows and vendors don't publish those caps in tokens — verdicts compare the price of this volume, not entitlements. The higher the multiple, the more likely a cap cuts in first.
Seven ways in.
Nothing in this table is a tier of opencode, because opencode has no tiers. Each row is a different way to put a model behind a client that costs nothing either way — which is why the cheapest row is your own machine and the most expensive is a frontier model at list price.
| Route | Bought as | Price | What it buys |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local model | Own hardware | Your hardware | The client is MIT-licensed and the model runs on your own machine, so no invoice exists on this route. You pay in hardware, electricity, and the gap between what fits in local memory and what a frontier model does. |
| Your own API key | API key | At model rates | 52 providers documented, from the frontier labs to Bedrock, Vertex, Groq and OpenRouter. opencode meters nothing itself, so the ceiling and the bill both belong to whoever issued the key. |
| OpenCode Zen | API key | At model rates | The vendor's own gateway: pay per request against a published per-token card, with credits rather than a subscription. Card processing is passed through at 4.4% + $0.30. Six models are free while the labs behind them collect feedback, and on those the training opt-out is what you give up. |
| OpenCode Go | Subscription | $10/mo | Open-weight models only, with the ceiling stated in dollars of usage at the published card rate rather than in messages or credits: $12 per 5 hours, $30 per week, $60 per month. Reaching the limit drops you to the free models rather than blocking you. Only one member of a workspace may subscribe. |
| ChatGPT Plus | Subscription | $20/mo | Named in the docs as one of three subscriptions that work with zero setup. Turns draw on the ChatGPT plan's allowance rather than an API balance. |
| GitHub Copilot Pro | Per seat | $10/seat/mo | Authenticates by device code and spends the Copilot seat's allowance. GitHub also publishes a free tier and higher seats at $39 and $100; the docs warn some models need Pro+ or above. |
| Enterprise | Per seat | Contact sales | Per-seat, no published number. Carries a term none of the other tools here offer: bring your own LLM gateway and the vendor does not charge for tokens at all, only for seats. |
Free three separate ways, and they are not equally free. The client costs nothing under any of them. Pointed at a local model, the running cost is nothing too. Pointed at the vendor's six free hosted models, the price is your prompts: each is free while the lab behind it collects feedback, and NVIDIA's two say in the docs not to send confidential data.
Read off, in order of appearance: opencode.ai/providers, 2026-08-28 opencode.ai/zen, 2026-08-28 opencode.ai/go, 2026-08-28 github.com/plans, 2026-08-28 opencode.ai/enterprise, 2026-08-28
Priced by who you are.
This is the most interesting thing the vendor sells, and not because of the price. The allowance is denominated in dollars of usage at a published rate card — per five hours, per week, per month — rather than in messages, credits or an unexplained window. That means you can work out in advance what you are getting, which is not true of any other subscription in this section. Two catches: the model list is open-weight only, and one workspace may have exactly one subscriber.
Bring the key and pay the lab directly. opencode meters nothing of its own, so nothing is marked up and nothing is capped except by whoever issued the key — and the rate is the one on our own rate tables. This is also the route with no floor and no ceiling: an idle day costs nothing, and a heavy one costs whatever a heavy day of tokens costs.
The docs name three subscriptions that work with zero setup, and this is the one most readers already hold. Turns spend the plan's allowance rather than an API balance, so the marginal cost of using opencode is nothing until you hit the limit you were already living with. Note the conspicuous absence from that list: a Claude subscription is not among them, and the reason is on the hub.
An MIT client plus a local runtime is the only combination here that reaches a true zero, and the docs name five runtimes it supports. The bill moves rather than disappears: you pay in hardware, in electricity, and in the gap between a model that fits in your memory and one that does not. Worth it when the alternative is not sending the code at all.
No published number, so treat the row as a starting point rather than a quote. What makes it worth a call is a term we have not seen elsewhere in this section: bring your own gateway and the vendor charges for seats but not for tokens. Combined with a central config that can disable every other provider, this is the rare enterprise story where the technical claim and the commercial one point the same way.
Bringing your own key.
This is the default way to run opencode and the reason the tool exists in the shape it does. The provider directory documents fifty-two of them — the frontier labs, the Chinese labs, Bedrock, Vertex, Groq, OpenRouter, and the local runtimes — and the client takes no cut of any of them. Whatever a model costs on our rate tables is what it costs here, because opencode is not in the billing path at all.
The consequence worth planning around is that nothing stops you. There is no window, no weekly cap and no allowance to run down — the only ceiling is the one your provider enforces, and the only warning is your own invoice. If you are moving from a subscription-shaped tool, that is the adjustment: the cost becomes proportional to how much you actually use it, which is cheaper on a quiet week and worse on a bad one. Our subscription-versus-API calculator is the fastest way to find out which side of that line you are on.
Cancelling, and the word that is missing.
The vendor's terms of use took effect on 15 August 2026, thirteen days before this page was written. They set out recurring billing plainly: charges continue without further authorisation until you give notice, and notice is given through account settings. They also reserve the right to suspend or terminate access for any reason at the vendor's discretion. Payments run through Stripe; disputes go to arbitration in Delaware, with a class-action waiver.
What the document does not contain is the part that matters to anyone holding a balance. We searched the full text: refund, prorate, unused, balance, expire and credits appear zero times. That is a live question rather than a pedantic one, because the gateway's default behaviour is to reload twenty dollars onto your card whenever the balance runs low. So a reader can end up with prepaid credit, a stated right for the vendor to switch them off at will, and nothing written down about what happens to the money in between.
We are not alleging anyone would do that, and we cannot: there is no policy to quote either way. It is worth setting against how the neighbours handle the same question. Anthropic states outright that payments are non-refundable. OpenAI's two help articles contradict each other on whether asking for a refund cancels your plan. Here there is no statement to be inconsistent with — which is the least common of the three and the easiest to fix. If you use the pay-as-you-go route, the practical advice is to switch auto-reload off and top up deliberately.
Frequently asked.
What people search next.