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OpenCode vs Pi Coding Agent

OpenCode and Pi are free, MIT-licensed terminal coding agents that work with the model you choose, so the choice is about how much comes in the box. OpenCode is the fuller product: a terminal UI, a desktop app in beta and an IDE extension, with build and plan agents built in and its own optional model services. Pi is a deliberately small agent that leaves out sub-agents and plan mode on purpose and expects you to add what you want through extensions. You can even run Pi on OpenCode's models.

What you get out of the box

OpenCode ships two main agents: build, with full access, and plan, which is read-only for exploring code, plus a general subagent for multistep searches. It installs with a script, npm, Homebrew, Arch, mise or Nix, and the desktop app has macOS, Windows and Linux downloads. You can log in with a GitHub Copilot account or a ChatGPT Plus or Pro plan. The repo now lives at anomalyco/opencode.

Pi gives the model four tools (read, write, edit, bash) and runs interactively, in print/JSON mode, over RPC or as a TypeScript SDK. Sessions are stored as trees, so /tree takes you back to an earlier message to branch from there, with every branch in one file. For sub-agents it suggests spawning Pi instances in tmux or installing an extension; plans go in files. MCP is built in. Extensions, skills, prompt templates and themes can be bundled as packages and shared over npm or git. It needs Node.js 22.19 or newer and comes from Earendil Inc.

Cost, and Pi with OpenCode Zen

Pi is free; you pay whichever provider you connect, by API key or subscription login through /login. OpenCode is free too, but it also sells models. Zen is pay-as-you-go (Claude Sonnet 5.5 is $2 in and $10 out per million tokens, and a few models are free for a limited time). Go is a subscription for open coding models such as Kimi K3, Qwen3.8 and GLM-5.3, at $10 a month, or $40 for Go Plus with higher limits.

Pi lists "OpenCode Zen and Go" as a provider: set OPENCODE_API_KEY and Pi uses the same models. So if you like OpenCode's model plans but prefer working in Pi, you don't have to pick one.

OpenCode: Pick OpenCode if you want a ready plan/build workflow, a desktop app or IDE extension, and an optional $10 model subscription from the same vendor.

Pi Coding Agent: Pick Pi if you want a small agent with branching session trees that you shape yourself with extensions, using any provider, including OpenCode's.

Facts checked Oct 18, 2026 against 7 sources

Which one should you try?

OpenCode

Free

Best for Developers who want an open-source coding agent in the terminal

Visit OpenCode See full review

Pi Coding Agent

Free

Best for Developers who use coding agents heavily and start feeling constrained by defaults, wanting a minimal terminal coding…

Visit Pi Coding Agent See full review

Pricing, capabilities and platforms side by side. Prices are as of the "Pricing checked" date in the table.

OpenCode

OpenCode

OpenCode is an MIT-licensed AI coding agent for the terminal that works with the model provider you choose, including local models. We installed it and ran three agent tasks: 9 of 9 passed with Claude Opus 5.5, 3 of 9 with a 3B local model.

Pi Coding Agent

Pi Coding Agent

Pi runs in a loop with full tool-calling access — read, write, edit, bash — and surfaces four modes: interactive TUI, print/JSON for scripting, RPC, and an SDK for deeper integration. Sessions are stored as trees, so you can rewind to any prior message, fork from that point, and share the entire branch as a rendered URL. The extension and skills system lets you load context on-demand rather than stuffing everything into the system prompt at startup — which the docs describe as a deliberate choice to stay token-efficient. Where Pi stops short is also deliberate: sub-agents and plan mode are not included by default, so teams that need multi-agent parallelism or structured planning build or install extensions themselves. That tradeoff keeps the core minimal, but it means the complexity budget shifts from the tool to you.

AttributeOpenCodePi Coding Agent
PricingFreeFree
PriceFree (MIT). Optional Zen models pay as you go; Go $10/mo, Go Plus $40/mo—
Pricing checkedOct 19, 2026Not checked yet
Free trialNot statedNot stated
Open sourceYesYes
Has APIYesYes
Self-hosted optionYesYes
PlatformsTerminal, Desktop (beta macOS/Windows/Linux), IDE extensionmacOS, Linux, Windows (terminal; npm package)
Pros
  • Passed all 9 of our agent tasks with Claude Opus 5.5.
  • Works with the provider you choose, including a local model behind an OpenAI-compatible server.
  • Open source under the MIT license.
  • Skills load context on-demand instead of at startup, so you avoid busting the prompt cache on every message — which means longer iterative sessions stay token-efficient without manual context trimming.
  • Pi can modify its own extensions mid-session and hot-reload without restarting, so you don't context-switch out of the terminal when the default tooling doesn't fit a task.
  • Tree-structured session history with branch-and-share lets you rewind to any prior message and fork from there, so debugging a bad run doesn't mean losing the good parts of the session that preceded it.
  • Provider-agnostic routing across 15-plus providers with mid-session switching via a single keystroke, so swapping models when costs spike or a provider goes down is a one-keystroke operation rather than an environment variable hunt.
  • MIT license with full self-hosted support and SDK/RPC access, so teams with strict data-residency requirements or custom pipeline integrations aren't blocked by a vendor-controlled API boundary.
Cons
  • With a 3B local model it passed 3 of 9 tasks (only the simplest one), so plan on a larger model.
  • It reaches out to models.opencode.ai and registry.npmjs.org, and downloads provider packages on first use, so offline setups need those pre-installed.
  • The vendor lists its desktop app as beta.
  • Sub-agents and plan mode are absent by default — teams that need agents running tasks in parallel or a structured planning step before execution have to install an extension or build that layer themselves, which means owning and maintaining custom code before the agent does the thing they bought it for.
  • The extension system gives you the rope, but the vendor docs and community are the only guides — when an extension breaks a mid-session reload or a custom compaction strategy misfires at context limit, there is no enterprise support tier to call; teams debug it themselves or post to Discord.
  • A team that needs a polished, opinionated agent with built-in plan mode, visual workflow review, or managed cloud execution will hit the minimalism ceiling fast and migrate to a product like Claude Code or Cursor that ships those features without a build-it-yourself prerequisite.

Made up your mind?

OpenCode

Free

Best for Developers who want an open-source coding agent in the terminal

Visit OpenCode See full review

Pi Coding Agent

Free

Best for Developers who use coding agents heavily and start feeling constrained by defaults, wanting a minimal terminal coding…

Visit Pi Coding Agent See full review

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Specs come from each tool's own site and docs (how we test). AIDiveForge is editorially independent.

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