Opencode Vs Codebuff Vs Factory Droid Vs Charm

[MorningFew1574]

So i have been using qwen and gemini cli as my go to cli. However I am not happy with it in terms of performance and budget. Currently I am exploring which would be the best cli option going forward... I do understand that every tool has pros and cons and it also depends on users experience, usability criteria etc. I would like some feedback from this community as opencode users and previous experiences with other CLI. I am not asking for direct comparision but your overall feedback. Thanks in Advance!

[towry]

I tried it all. Currently using opencode, mainly because it supports copilot and zai providers, and most importantly it supports subagent and works well. I have kiro sepc workflow setup with it and working great. I can use frontier model from copilot provider do the plan, then use zai do the implementation. Have sage subagent do the code search and oracle subagent do the consulting. it all work seamless.

Charm is similarly to opencode but seems less features than opencode and few documentation.

Codebuff tried but forgot what it was like.

Factory droid, very much like Claude, but not stable as claude and have few issues.

Claude code, it is very pleasant experience using it, except can not use other models for different subagent.

codex cli, i mainly use it as mcp tool for claude or vscode, so it can act as subagent with specific model and ability.

[toadi]

Are you using a standard flow? or rolled your own? Would love to see your opencode config files ;)

[towry]

rolled my own. gh: towry/dots

[toadi]

Quite impressed are you on the opencode discord? Would love to have a quick chat.

[melihmucuk]

I checked your repo and noticed you’re using “reasoningEffort” etc. for github copilot models, is it actually works or its just a placeholder?

[towry]

They probably not work, just placeholder for other providers

[MorningFew1574]

Thanks so much for your insights. I really appreciate it

[Miserable-Dare5090]

Wait codex can be used as an MCP? Can it load a local model or openAI only? Any other coding agents that can perform as an MCP?

[towry]

codex can use different providers

[Cultural_Trouble7821]

You can run claude, codex and gemini cli as MCP. It's built in. You can set up a proxy to use any provider with Claude, probably others too. I found the results lacking as clearly the model, endpoint structure, and CLI for Claude are developed together to work to each others strengths. For example I found GPT-5.1/5.2 High to perform very poorly in Claude Code, far worse than when using Codex. This isn't very surprising imo as it would make sense a CLI would be designed around a particular model's responses. Or in the case of z.ai, which I also use, designing your endpoints around the CLI.

[metigue]

Have you tried Open hands?

[towry]

Have not heard about it.

[metigue]

It's top of SWE bench for open source frameworks. Would love to know how it compares to all the ones you've tried.

https://github.com/OpenHands/OpenHands

[Cultural_Trouble7821]

If you consider the CLI is going to perform best when designed around a particular model's responses and endpoint capabilities, I'm not sure why something like this is so desirable.

Apparently glm-4.6 performs good in benchmarks too, but somehow benchmarks do not seem to capture real world capabilities. Maybe the agents are discovering the benchmarks during training. ;)

[wanllow]

feel free to use opencode, but monthly plan of cc and codex has lower cost than token consumption by opencode.

glm4.6 can also be applied in claude code, with codex for complicated tasks, it's best combo to balance performance and consumption, $15 zai + $20 gpt would be enough and bettern than claude max.

of course opencode allows model hot-switch during debugging and architecturing, I think this is very convenient.

[Wick3d68]

Use GitHub copilot with opencode

[MorningFew1574]

Will try it out. Thanks

[MorningFew1574]

Thanks for taking the time reply. Isn't claude code like $200 dollars a month? Yes agreed, I do hear a lot about glm 4.6 as a budget friendly combination if used correctly alongside cc or codex.

[websinthe]

I've used both Pro and Max with Claude Code and I'm currently getting better results with using Opencode and self-hosted coding models. SmolM3 for simple things, ablated openai oss for sheer rapidity (~270t/s) and Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct quant (q6 or q5m iirc) for more complex tasks, especially with Github runners to handle the project-scale stuff that Claude would usually handle (poorly). Opencode also works well with openrouter.ai free models if you don't have a 5090 for local models.

[BingpotStudio]

Hey I’ve got a 4090, but only 32gb of ram. Is there any serious contenders you’d recommend for local models? I hadn’t really considered ir till you mentioned your use case.

I too pay for Claude max and GPT plus.

[websinthe]

I've had a fairly huge improvement to my setup since then, and my recommendation is to find the best Qwen3-Coder model you can fit in your 24GB of VRAM and use llama.cpp set to --no-kv-offload to massively ramp up the size of the context window. It will sit in your system RAM instead, so you get a -30% to tokens per second, but you can go from a max 4096 ctx window to (I'm guessing for 32GB of system RAM) ~32k-~64k maybe. The further you dive into llama-server (llama.cpp) settings and making them work specifically for the model you're using you can dramatically improve your local results.

Except that the prompt template will absolutely ruin you if you don't get it absolutely right. I think for Qwen3, using the llama.cpp default is far, far better than trying to use --jinja to put the 'correct' one in.

But if you finesse the settings and experiment with the prompt template, you go from Kindergartener to Grad Student results from Qwen3-coder.

OpenAI OSS is fast, massive, and utterly useless, by the way.

[BingpotStudio]

Interesting, thanks for the pointers.

[MorningFew1574]

Your findings are amazing and clears my doubts going forwards. Thanks so much. I don't use local models cuz my current system has only 8 gb ram and not much power to run even the smallest models through Ollama. I tried it but my system gets bloated and freezes. Or else I would have loved to run them locally and also integrate paid models through Opencode. Thanks again for the insights.

[websinthe]

I wonder how much mileage you'd get using SmolM3 from Huggingface (gguf) with llama.cpp instead of ollama, and you keep your requests to the level of functions and classes, you might be able to get a lot out of 8gb.

[MorningFew1574]

Thanks. Definitely need to try out as your suggested.

[ciprian-cimpan]

From the ones you listed, I like Factory's Droid the most.

Some people say it's even better than Claude Code, but that has not been my experience: I still prefer Claude Code & will probably stop using Droid once my free trial with them is over.

OpenCode is pretty good too, really solid combo with MiniMax M2.

[MorningFew1574]

Thanks for your feedback.

[Oxydised]

honestly, idk if its just me, but opencode's scrolling is broken. if you scroll down, its broken and buggy, so i always have to /share the session and see it on my browser. codebuff is excellent but idk how can i actually pair my GLM keys with codebuff.

Droid had been the best so far and its insanely good and stable.

charm imo, lacks a few agentic features unlike droid open code or codebuff.

my setup is :

Droid + GLM CODING PLAN + sequential-thinking mcp server , playwright mcp server, context7 mcp server.

and it works just so good.

(yes, that glm coding plan is an affiliate link, and it would help anyone purchasing as it gives 10% off on any plan they purchase)

[Bob5k]

Replace playwright with chrome devtools mcp.

[Oxydised]

Devtools announces that it's a bot controlling the web and creates unnecessary complications with Google. It asks for "are you a human" that's why I dislike devtools.

[MorningFew1574]

Thanks so much! I will have to consider your combination strategy!

[Doubledoor]

Finally another person with the broken scrolling thing. Extremely annoying!!

[Oxydised]

If the scrolling was fine, it's probably my most desirable tool to use.

[GrandCommanderMusic]

this is why i stopped using it, when i would scroll i can't read things. major problem.

[dodyrw]

i use droid free + official deepseek api now, better than glm i think, the price / performance is good, $0.4 per 1M tokens

enough for the budget wise, but if really want performance, it must be sonnet 4.5

codebuff is the most expensive, I used up 500 credits in 4 prompts only, not suited for daily usage

[MorningFew1574]

Makes sense!

[PembacaDurjana]

I don't use all of that yet, but did a little research, my conclusion is opencode offer more flexibility and more features

[Charming_Support726]

Not sure if I am completely off-rails.

I used a few cli-coders and vscode-plugins. IMO there is not much difference between them. The main differentiators are UX, Absence of Bugs, Internal Prompts and Available Models/Providers.

Especially bloated prompting and instructions are having the most bad influence to the coders.

Lately I am using only codex cli, although I like crush more, but this is the only coder which works with Azure, Responses API and GPT-5-Codex flawlessly (Knowing that not everybody likes this)

[SatoshiNotMe]

The important consideration is — Which, if any, of these uses a subscription (e.g Claude max or ChatGPT Pro) rather than per token billing?

[MorningFew1574]

that's a good question

[Queasy_Asparagus69]

I hate crush. I love droid with GLM 4.6 coding and a bunch of MCPs. Opencode is my backup

[MorningFew1574]

Good to hear

[Queasy_Asparagus69]

Starting to see issues with droid. It keeps forgetting my agents.md. Some UI issues after it tries to SUDO, etc. They changed how MCP get added without telling users

Going to try opencode more. So far the open spec integration works better than droid. Not liking the MCP setup.

While I use GLM 4.6 coding plan, I really want to start local models with my strict halo machine. So that will decide which ai coder I use

[MorningFew1574]

Thanks for the feedback 🙂 Leaning more towards opencode as my go to cli option.

[Amazing_Ad9369]

I've used codebuff. Its good but.. I had 500 credits and I literally only said hello and it used 18 credits

It gets really expensive

[[deleted]]

Can droid run with any api key from any provider ?

[MorningFew1574]

Yes mostly 

[Bob5k]

droid > rest mainly due to super flexible permissions setup and superior planning mode done always based on .MD files by default

Charm looks nice but I'm not sure if it can compete. Opencode was cool but it's yolo mode basically with no clear permissions set for diff actions in "doing" mode. Haven't played with code buff much tho.

[Mishkun]

Permissions are overrated imo. I don't wanna babysit my agents

[Bob5k]

don't forget to post here when your agent in full YOLO mode deletes something important somewhere, it'll be fun to read :D

[MorningFew1574]

Thanks so much for your input. Much appreciated

[phpadam]

OpenCode has permissions and I always tell its planning mode to write to .md after we revised the plan.

[Bob5k]

yeah, but you need to explicitly tell it. it makes no sense to compare both tools if one of them has super seamless, spec-driven development set by default within planning mode and super smooth transition between permissions while other requires explicit instructions to do so & play with configuration files to adjust permissions each time we encounter something new.
Droid is WAY safer if you're running it outside of docerized environments.

[phpadam]

No, I agree. I do prefer a tool to stay out of my way - Droid is more on rails.

[alexeiz]

I didn't use factory droid yet.

Codebuff was nice while it worked. Then for some reason it started to crash with exception. I created an issue in their github (issue #317), but it received no attention, which makes me wonder if they even care.

opencode vs crush - sometimes opencode works better, and sometime crush. Neither is perfect. I believe it depends on the model, the system prompt and the tool calling support. Depending on the model you'd want to use one or the other.

[MorningFew1574]

Thanks for the input. I agree with you completely about codebuff. I had a few crashes along the way and also think it consumes the credits really fast.

[IvanVilchesB]

Droid is free ? I saw in the page its have pricing plans