OpenCode Zen

tom@tomrochette.com (Tom Rochette) — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

OpenCode Zen is the OpenCode (Anomaly) team’s curated pay-per-use AI gateway, one API key over a tested catalog that spans open models and the Claude, GPT, Gemini, and Grok lines. Facts below verified as of 2026-09-26.

What it is
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Zen is a billing and routing gateway, not a model: you add credits, get a key, and call OpenAI-compatible, Anthropic-compatible, Google, or Responses endpoints under opencode.ai/zen/v1. The team benchmarks each model/provider pair and serves what passes, their answer to getting a degraded version of a model through a generic router. It also sells to teams (workspaces, roles, member spending caps, model toggles, BYOK for OpenAI and Anthropic keys), and free stealth and promo models rotate through the catalog.

Status
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Active, with heavy catalog churn managed through a public deprecation table (docs updated 2026-09-25), and workspaces free during the beta with team pricing unannounced. The Reddit thread “Opencode Zen is astoundingly more expensive than OpenRouter” (July 2026) is the sharpest public criticism and remains the note’s key stress test. Zen sells curation and reliability, and community measurements say that premium can exceed 4x the cheapest gateway on identical models.

Strengths
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Every endpoint is benchmarked for coding-agent use, so you avoid badly served providers.
A stable of free models (Big Pickle, Space Bunny Free, MiMo Free, Nemotron Free) with documented data caveats.
Markups are claimed to be zero beyond pass-through processing fees (4.4% + $0.30 per card transaction).
US-hosted with zero-retention on most models, exceptions listed per model.
Same balance backs the Go subscription’s overflow, and the key works from any agent.

Cautions
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A July 2026 community test measured Zen at more than 4x OpenRouter on Kimi K2.6 and MiniMax M2.7.
The gap persists per model as of 2026-09-26: Zen lists GLM-5.3-Flash at $0.15/$0.50 per 1M tokens while OpenRouter’s catalog shows about $0.05/$0.14.
Auto-reload adds $20 whenever your balance drops below $5, which can overrun a monthly budget you set.
Deprecated models vanish on published dates, so configs need migrations, and free stealth models may use your data to improve the model during their free window.

Pricing
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Pay-as-you-go per 1M tokens, as of 2026-09-26: GLM-5.3 $1.40/$4.40, GLM-5.3-Flash $0.15/$0.50, Kimi K3 $3/$15, Qwen3.7 Plus $0.40/$1.60, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash $0.30/$1.20, MiniMax M3 $0.30/$1.20. Frontier lines: Claude Sonnet 5 $2/$10, Claude Opus 5.5 $4/$20, GPT 5.5 $5/$30, Gemini 3.8 Flash $1.50/$7.50, Grok 4.7 $2/$6. Jev 1.13 charges $0.042 per input with free output, and nine models are free including the Big Pickle and Space Bunny stealth models, all for a limited time. Auto-reload charges $20 when the balance falls below $5, and OpenCode itself uses low-cost models to generate session titles on your bill.

Price history
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Date	Plan	Change	Source
2026-09-26	Pay-per-use catalog	Baseline: per-model rates as published (GLM-5.3 $1.40/$4.40, Kimi K3 $3/$15, Jev 1.13 $0.042 in)	https://opencode.ai/docs/zen/

Compared to
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OpenCode Go (../opencode-go/index.md) is the sibling subscription: $10/month for capped open-model usage, no frontier models, same balance; choose it when you want a ceiling. OpenRouter (../openrouter/index.md) is the breadth play: hundreds of models, passthrough pricing, 5.5% credit fee; choose it when price per token on open models matters more than curation. Holding your own provider keys is cheapest for a single provider, and Zen’s BYOK only covers OpenAI and Anthropic.

Bottom line
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Recommended for OpenCode-centric developers who want vetted endpoints, free models to fall back on, and US-hosted zero-retention. Not for price-sensitive, high-volume runs on open models, where OpenRouter wins on raw per-token cost. My disagreeable claim: the curation premium is worth paying only when a mis-served provider would silently degrade your agent, and most coding work is not that sensitive.

Changes
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2026-09-26 - Created.

References
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https://opencode.ai/docs/zen/ - per-model price table, free models, auto-reload, deprecations, privacy (200).
https://docs.docker.com/ai/docker-agent/providers/opencode-zen/ - third-party integration doc, Zen vs Go billing table (200).
https://www.reddit.com/r/opencodeCLI/comments/1syog9v/opencode_zen_is_astoundingly_more_expensive_than/ - critical 4x price claim vs OpenRouter (direct fetch 403; content read via search).
https://costgoat.com/pricing/openrouter/ - OpenRouter per-model prices used for the GLM-5.3-Flash comparison (200, as of 2026-09-25).
https://opencode.ai/docs/go - shared balance and “Use balance” fallback mechanics (200).
https://www.truefoundry.com/blog/openrouter-pricing - OpenRouter fee structure used as the price counterpoint (200).

pay-per-use on tomrochette.com

OpenCode Zen

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pay-per-use on tomrochette.com

OpenCode Zen

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What it is
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Status
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Strengths
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Cautions
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Pricing
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Price history
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Compared to
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Bottom line
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Changes
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See also
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References
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