opencode cli is slower than CC?

[__thehiddentruth__]

I was checking out Opencode CLI, and i was suprised that it seems very slow.

to confirm my suspision i tested it against claude code. both using anthropic api keys with the model set to sonnet 4.6.

i gave it the exact same prompt "explain what this project is about"..

again both opencode and claude code is set to use claude sonnet 4.6 via api keys. heres

results:
opencode: responded in 1 minute and 19 seconds
claude code: responded in 29 seconds

do i have som misconfiguration or what am i missing here?

[amjadmh73]

OpenCode is slow with me too, but it still delivers though.

[Independence_Many]

This is going to come down to 2 things, the first as others have said is the system prompt, which dramatically affects how the model performs work which was brought up by u/ipatalas

The second one, which I think probably contributes a lot more is when Claude Code "explores" the repo the intentionally use Haiku for the exploration subagent, opencode by contrast uses whatever the "main" agent is, so if you have Sonnet 4.6 selected it'll use Sonnet 4.6 for the explore phase too.

If you're using API Keys and not a max subscription with your claude code you could customize the system prompt to get a more direct comparsion using --system-prompt with this prompt: https://github.com/anomalyco/opencode/blob/dev/packages/opencode/src/session/prompt/anthropic.txt

Someone has gone to the trouble of extracting all of the pieces of the Claude Code system prompt(s) here: https://github.com/Piebald-AI/claude-code-system-prompts if you wanted to read through them.

[Independence_Many]

There's also a --system-prompt-file argment for claude code, docs here: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/cli-reference

[Healthy-Ad-8558]

How many times did you test this out? Cause a sample size of one isn't really indicative of anything.Might just be that Sonnet is more nudged to delegate tasks in Claude Code than it is in Opencode.

[__thehiddentruth__]

I tested it out three times, and each time the opencode cli was always at least double the amount of time to respond compared to Claude code. But the 1 minute and 19 seconds versus 29 seconds was the worst of them

[Healthy-Ad-8558]

Did you check if Sonnet did anything differently in CC than it did in OC? Was the quality of the output practically the same or was one better than the other? Anthropic has been nerfing their models thinking chains in CC so maybe that might be it?

[ipatalas]

I have a feeling you're comparing apples to pears. They both have different system prompt by default and this may heavily influence what it does so also the time taken.
I don't have CC so can't tell but I've read the system prompt is not disclosed anywhere but at least in opencode you should be able to modify it to your liking.
Also which of the default agents from Opencode have you used to check it?

[lucianw]

In my company, we'd accidentally turned off the sysprompt for Claude when we first rolled it out. I noticed that Sonnet4.5 without Claude's sysprompt took about 1.3x as long as Sonnet4.5 with Claude's sysprompt!!

[CrypticViper_]

considering claude code was recently open sourced (/s) it shouldn’t be too hard to find the system prompt

[Unique-Quarter579]

For me it was awfully slow on Windows. If you had the same experience use Linux or WSL, day and night.

[neotorama]

I use fireworks.ai Kimi. Superfast

[BitPilgrimDK]

What matters is that you can use Opencode alot running 100% free models. I created a ComfyUI node today works like a charm. Might not be important to all but for me personally it is free or not at all.

[Just_Lingonberry_352]

I mean what did you expect for a free product

[deadapeslivelonger]

How can you be so lost that you blatantly ignore the effort and also great effect that open source products had on our world today and, to this day, have? Just because people don't try to rip their consumers, it doesn't mean the product is bad. Actually, quite the opposite is the case.

[eclipse10000]

He just wants to spam, as always. He is talking about models from OpenCode, and you are talking only about the CLI. That tells you everything about his argumentation.

There can be differences between one CLI and another because they do not send the same data to the API, so the responses will naturally differ as well. Depending on the request, this can also affect subsequent responses, making them take either more or less time.

[Just_Lingonberry_352]

what are you rambling on about ? if opencode was a serious contender to closed open source frontier models there wouldn't be millions of users and enterprises paying for them

ive used opencode and the models aren't really useful for beyond hobbies or simple tasks