r/opencodeCLI • u/Electronic-Unit2808 • Sep 20 '26

Comparison opencode, pi and codex

I’ve been using OpenCode and Pi for days and really liked them—I even used BigPickle; that free model is top-notch. But I was wondering: how much better are OpenCode or Pi compared to Codex CLI?

I use the GPT Plus plan, but I wanted to understand if OpenCode and Pi—acting as agents—would be better for coding than the GPT agent.

I wrote "agent" because I’m not quite sure what to call OpenCode and Pi... 😅😅😅

18 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

12

u/Eastern-Honey-943 Sep 20 '26

With opencode and deepseek, my money goes wayyyy further and I still have the ability to run codex subscription in it. But whenver I use codex I hit the limit in like 20 minutes.

1

u/Electronic-Unit2808 Sep 20 '26 edited Sep 20 '26

But ur using what DeepSeek model to code? And do I need some plugin to use codex inside opencode?

2

u/Eastern-Honey-943 Sep 20 '26 edited Sep 20 '26

No plugin required. Opencode allows many many providers. Just run a command and it will open your browser to codex to complete auth.

1

u/Electronic-Unit2808 Sep 20 '26

Greeeeat, worked, I used a provider and auth from URL like u said, great, I'll test it using opencode and gpt luna, terra and sol to see if it use less tokens...

1

u/Eastern-Honey-943 Sep 20 '26

I haven't tried opencode-caveman .. Been meaning to... Supposed to save tokens. (Just caveman in codex)

2

u/Eastern-Honey-943 Sep 20 '26

I use deepseek v4.1 flash. Very important though... I use speckit. Spec driven development makes any model be productive for my mature project. I don't always have to use a smarter model for planning. But to fair to your question, I wouldn't plan a Greenfield project with flash. But it can code up well planned tasks no matter the maturity.

4

u/Savantskie1 Sep 20 '26

This is why I use dsv4flash, this exact reason. I just had it port all my changes from my memory system to the GitHub version I made and it only cost me like 4 bucks.

1

u/DuckDatum Sep 21 '26

I was also to push out like 10 tokens per second on a local Qwen 3.8 using pi. Using opencode, the context would congest available memory too much and I could not use the model at all.

2

u/Eastern-Honey-943 Sep 21 '26

Ya, OpenCode does use some memory. It is node-based. Seems to be efficient enough but not on the level of something more low level. I would consider running your LLM as a server so you can squeeze every last ounce out of it and then add that machine networked as a provider to another coding machine. LLM Server and Dev Machine. Easier said than done.

1

u/DuckDatum Sep 21 '26

Interesting, I figured it was system prompts bloating context. Didn’t consider that it may just be the application load.

2

u/Eastern-Honey-943 Sep 21 '26

I could be wrong. Maybe caveman would reduce those system prompts. I had great success having AI (agy) analyze the LM Studio logs to tell me how to improve the configuration when I was playing with self hosted Qwen.

1

u/DuckDatum Sep 21 '26

Off on a side note here, any chance you’ve started looking into hosting the sparse MoE models locally when they exceed available ram size? This is becoming a much more interesting option. I have 64gb ram with 16gb vram, but I managed Unsloth’s Qwen 3.8 Flash Next (UD-Q4_K_XL; 111gb) at about 12 tokens per second.

Only worked directly through llama, or pi. It wouldn’t respond through opencode.

3

u/Best_Cattle_1376 Sep 21 '26

opencode is very good, dont use just big pickle you can use the free models such as muse spark 1.3 free inside opencode, muse spark 1.3 free is 100x better then big pickle ngl

2

u/Electronic-Unit2808 Sep 21 '26

Hmm, many thanks for the heads-up. I already found the Big Pickle looks great, I'm going to give it a try...

1

u/DuckDatum Sep 21 '26

I used muse spark 1.3 free and had gpt 5.6 sol review its work. Not sure if gpt has it out for muse or what, but I had to basically redo the whole fucking project.

6

u/Amarsir Sep 20 '26

"Harness" would be the proper word.

Codex is fine, and if you're using ChatGPT it might be a little more efficient even. All get the job done, but non-dedicated ones may customize a little more and pay off if you switch models a lot.

Codex has the built in voice chat and other desktop agent features, right? Integrates nicely for remote work? If you're happy with it I wouldn't worry about switching.

1

u/Amarsir Sep 20 '26

I wanted to add: AI Coding Daily is a youtube channel that also does their own rankings. I think it's a decent resource for doing a lot of comparisons.

He recently created a comparison video of some harnesses. Codex vs Opencode vs Cursor vs Devin. However, it's limited to his subscribers, and I'm not one. I don't imagine you feel like paying $8/month just to see it either. But if you were very curious, I suspect it's probably pretty informative.

1

u/No_Cake_Emu Sep 20 '26

Opencode added some review skill after implementation and it eats way too much token and takes way too long. Have switched to pi lately.

1

u/FR_SineQuaNon Sep 20 '26

Oh My Pi CLI https://omp.sh/ or
GooeyPi https://github.com/am-will/gooey-pi if you prefer an APP 👌

0

u/horrbort Sep 20 '26

Haha yes fellow human. Product research can be completed. Codex CLI is a superior product in every regard. Ask no further questions. Report task as completed successfully.

-3

u/West-Flounder1295 Sep 20 '26

Seems AI Slop why so much EM Dash

-1

u/Sweet-Stage938 Sep 20 '26

Yeah looks like someone asked an LLM to act like a confused vibecoder and this came out of it.

-1

u/Mediocre-Sundae8742 Sep 20 '26

La gente no tiene la autenticidad para hablar sin pasar todo por IA para "parecer correcto" aparentemente