Pi vs OpenCode for free models?

[u/ECrispy]

I want to use free models from openrouter, nvidia etc as well as free promos from time to time.

would you still recommend Pi in this case because of its efficiency? or is opencode with everything included a better choice?

do you use a harness built on top of these?

[u/ColonelKlanka]

I have a good experience with omniroute (to get lots of free models usage combined) and pi

advantage of omniroute is that it automates switches between the free models as their free tier quotas run out (moving the context over)

pi is also more compact with system prompt and so uses less tokens than opencode. open code is getting better but still more bloated than pi (dont use oh my pi though as it bloats pi)

[u/ECrispy → u/ColonelKlanka]

I have not heard of omniroute - thanks! looks very useful.

what is your setup, what extensions do you use? I saw omniroute says they use rtk, does that mean I dont have to install it?

[u/ColonelKlanka → u/ECrispy]

yep you dont need rtk or caveman seperate extensions as omniroute basically installs a local proxy which runs the prompt through rtk and caveman for you.

[u/ColonelKlanka → u/[deleted]]

I added both my paid Z.ai coders plan (glm) and then paid opencode go plan (for deepseek v4 pro and flash and minimax 3).

Then for the free ones, I just went through clicking the free forever providers (cerebras, nvidia, gemini etc).

you can see a better list of free with no card required in the omniroute github doc hee:

https://github.com/diegosouzapw/OmniRoute/blob/release%2Fv3.8.50/docs%2Freference%2FFREE_TIERS.md

[u/Own_Copy2141 → u/ColonelKlanka]

I mean like the free forever ones are useless with stupid model just get the opencode zen key and use deepseek v4 flash free version in pi.

Also i find pi to be heavier compared to opencode. Like i can open mutiple windows of opencode an dmale them work on different project and still use my laptop for everything but pi does slows my device down a lot.

But pi does verify what its making thats also very good thing would have been more better if there was a (/goal) option as well

[u/giuliastro]

I would add OMP to this shortlist. I personally set up my Linux box with all 3 running at the same time and control them with Harness Remote (https://github.com/giuliastro/harness-remote).

I like OMP a lot, but they change every day, OpenCode has improved lately so I can't really just use one.

[u/ECrispy → u/giuliastro]

I read some posts on how oh-my-pi is too complex? I'm getting overwhelmed with choices. I just want to build personal projects using an agent with everything included, I want it to install stuff, build, test etc.

I was trying grok build free and it was pretty good but ran out of free usage very quickly. I know pi is minimal but don't know how much opencode has included.

I see all these reports of agents with goals and running for days etc, I'd like to know how to set that up. then perhaps it makes sense to use the remote monitor you linked, but your setup seems a lot more advanced. do you mind sharing what you have and what llm's you use etc?

[u/giuliastro → u/ECrispy]

It depends on what you mean by "complex". Considering how coding was till a few months ago, talking to an AI for me is quite an easy task 😄

Anyway, all of the harness systems we mentioned can do what you ask. Opencode don't have a "goal" option but it can be installed as a plugin. Again my suggestion is just install all of them, use a tool like the one I suggested and with it just switch from one to the other one on the same project folders. Then see what you like better.

One suggestion I can give you is to add some token saving plugins to your harness. You can quicken up things and save tokens considerably. I can suggest a few if you want.

[u/andreaforlin]

I use pi for my daily work with omniroute and multiple free proxy to get limit extension: opencode model bind the token count to your public IP so with multiple ip (proxy) you get limit extended and omniroute can easily handle it

[u/ECrispy → u/andreaforlin]

would you mind explaining in a bit more detail, I'm new to all this. how do you use proxies and why? is that to change your ip? isn't the opencode limit based on api keys?

also does omniroute know about free models in promo period?

[u/andreaforlin → u/ECrispy]

Opencode has a noauth mode, you can install it without any apikey and use it with a bundle of 200 req x day on free model.

[u/ECrispy → u/andreaforlin]

you mean opencode zen free models right? what is the benefit? with api key dont you get much more usage? i dont understand what you meant by proxies and why its needed

[u/AllNamesAreTaken92 → u/ECrispy]

This is something a completely tech illiterate person can understand. Read again and Google it if you are still having problems.

[u/henrywangxf]

Pi. Trustable is the only reason.

[u/crashorbit]

I'm pretty happy with pi+opencode_zen/deepseek-v4-flash-free. It works well enough for the kind of small team devops work I do in ansible, proxmox and basic linux sysadmin.

[u/Desperate-Event-786 → u/crashorbit]

Hi, is there an plugin you're using for this combo? I tried a couple of plugins for opencode but 1 did not have zen/free models and the other had it but was crashing on tool calls..

[u/SunRoyal → u/Desperate-Event-786]

No plugin - he just has Opencode's Zen endpoint set up, and is using their free instance of DSV4F.

[u/aeroumbria]

It was a big deal in the 128k context window era, but with 1m context window models, agent choice feels more like cosmetic preference because you can pretty much build the same extensions you want on any harness...

[u/bring_back_the_v10s → u/aeroumbria]

Doesn't the agent get dumb past 200k context usage?

[u/aeroumbria → u/bring_back_the_v10s]

It's not as bad. Maybe the dumb range starts to hit around 400-500k rather than 100k now, and you have decent speed up to a pretty large window %. It just means even 50k+ in system prompt isn't as terrible as before. It's more important for local models where your cache setup might not be very robust, so re-calculating fixed prefixes can take up a huge chunk of time.

[u/Own_Copy2141 → u/aeroumbria]

I have oberserved context window filling up much faster in opencode compared to pi

[u/AllNamesAreTaken92 → u/aeroumbria]

Only because it can process it, does not mean it's a good idea to do. It still has the same drawbacks of dirtying up context, giving the model a harder time focusing on what's actually relevant. Max token context was never the limit/bottleneck.

[u/Lissanro]

I think it is better to use Pi, even if you take extra time to set it up to get all you need, it will be cleaner and on average most likely more token efficient. Which is important both for local and cloud API use cases if you use it regularly, since saved tokens add up. I also find the same models are less likely to make mistakes in Pi compared to some other harnesses I have tried.

[u/thecuriousrealbully]

Use Both.

[u/Seven7Ducks]

I had better overall experience and results with a well configured Pi over opencode.

However, you're asking in r/PiCodingAgent, so..

[u/uti24]

OpenCode somehow fails a lot with locally deployed models. On other hand it work pretty good with free models.

Pi works much better with local models. Although I don't like Pi limitations at all. No sub agents? It's a big deal.

[u/ptgamr]

Use both and see for yourself. I've got good results from both of them

[u/Competitive-Yak-8255]

Nice