Freebuff vs OpenCode: a full free day vs free models "for a limited time"
OpenCode’s free models come with no published limits and a 362-comment error thread, and its paid plans have dollar caps. Freebuff is free all day, every day.
In short
- Our verdict: Freebuff. We make Freebuff, so weigh that, but every claim below links to a source you can check.
- OpenCode’s free models are free "for a limited time". Only one has a published quota. When the free tier broke in October, the maintainers needed a megathread that grew past 360 comments.
- Its paid plans have dollar caps. OpenCode Go is $10 a month with per-model dollar limits per 5 hours and per week, and pay-as-you-go top-ups carry a 4.6% + $0.31 fee.
- Freebuff is free for a full day of work, every day. Unlimited messages in every hour-long session, a published daily allowance with no monthly cap (up to 30 hours a day in the US), and models that never touch the allowance at all.
OpenCode is a popular open-source agent with a huge community, and it is a fine choice if you want to wire up your own providers. But "free" in OpenCode means a rotating set of promotional models with unpublished limits, and the free tier has had a rough autumn. If you want an agent that is simply free every day, Freebuff is the better choice.
At a glance
| Feature | Freebuff | OpenCode |
|---|---|---|
| Free models | Yes, with a published daily allowance | Yes, "for a limited time", mostly with no published limit |
| How usage is counted | Hour-long sessions with unlimited messages | Requests (free); dollar caps per 5 hours and per week (Go) |
| Monthly cap | None: the allowance refills every day | Monthly dollar limit per model on Go |
| Paid plan to unlock more | Not needed for a full day | Go $10/mo, Go Plus $40/mo, or top-ups with a 4.6% + $0.31 fee |
| Unmetered models | Yes: Solar Mini 4, Solar Pro 4, and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Fast for new accounts in top-tier countries | Free models with unpublished limits |
| Specialized subagents | 9 built in, including file-picker, code-reviewer and browser-use | Configurable agents |
| Browser workspace and Website Builder | Yes | No |
What OpenCode’s "free" means
OpenCode’s model docs list free models at $0 "for a limited time", and they work only inside OpenCode. Only one, LongCat 2.5 Free, has a published quota (100 requests a day). Several of the free models retain or train on what you send them.
For more, OpenCode Go is $10 a month (Go Plus $40), with a monthly dollar limit per model, of which 20% can be used in any 5-hour window and 50% in any week. Pay-as-you-go credit adds a 4.6% + $0.31 fee to each top-up.
What Freebuff gives you for free
- Unlimited messages in every session. A session lasts an hour, and the agent can read, edit, test and retry as many times as it needs inside it.
- A published daily allowance with no monthly cap. Up to 30 hours a day in the US, and 21 in countries such as Canada, the UK and Germany. That is 10 hours a day of DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, refilled every day. Not a promotion: it is how Freebuff works.
- Unmetered models. Solar Mini 4 and Solar Pro 4 never use your allowance. New accounts in the US and other top-tier countries also get DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Fast without touching it.
- More than a terminal. The CLI, the desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux, the web workspace and Website Builder, and apps for iOS and Android.
What OpenCode users are saying
- The free tier broke. In October the maintainers opened a megathread for free-tier errors, now past 360 comments, covering "Free usage exceeded" messages and daily resets that never came. Another open issue reports free models failing inside OpenCode’s own TUI with "free tier can only be used from within OpenCode".
- Paying for nothing. A user reported being charged for three months of Go while usage showed 0%, with no reply from support for over 40 hours. Another thread, with 36 upvotes, reports cards declined at Go renewal that their banks say they never declined.
- Limits users want raised. An issue with 84 upvotes asks for higher Go limits after model prices fell.
- Memory and crashes. The maintainers run a memory megathread (112 upvotes), and a September release broke every prompt on macOS.
- Privacy questions. Users asked why OpenCode is "not operating private by default" after session titles were generated off their network, even with local models.
- Reviews. OpenCode’s small Trustpilot page scores 2.2 from 14 reviews, the latest about access cut mid-month and a refund refused.
What Freebuff users are saying
yea i gues freebuff will replace opencode for me. i tested it for one day now and it has done the job better than opencode did.
The FreeBuff CLI UX feels great!! i love the Polish that you guys have put into it so far in recent updates
Where OpenCode is strong
OpenCode is MIT-licensed with one of the biggest communities in AI coding, it works with hundreds of providers including local models, and it publishes retention terms per model. If you want to run your own models or tinker with the agent itself, it is a good project. Freebuff’s CLI and SDK are open source too, and Freebuff accepts your own API keys when you want them.
Our verdict
Pick Freebuff. OpenCode’s free tier is a time-limited promotion with unpublished limits, and its paid plans have dollar caps and fees. Freebuff gives you unlimited messages in every session and a published allowance that refills every day, in the terminal, on every desktop, in the browser and on your phone.
Try Freebuff for free
No card, no API key. `npm install -g freebuff`