Beam is a new open model from Reflection: 501 billion parameters, 23 billion active per token, Apache 2.0 weights, and free to use on Reflection's own service while it is in beta. I wanted to know if free is good enough to build something real, so I gave it one brief and an hour.
The brief
Build a web-based, singleplayer kart racer in the spirit of Mario Kart, in an empty folder, with no human help. Seven asks: a closed 3D track with walls; a kart that accelerates, brakes, steers and drifts; three rival karts; a three-lap race with a countdown, lap counter and live position; item boxes with at least two items; a finish screen; and keyboard plus touch controls. It had to start with one command and end with an honest README of what works.
Beam ran in OpenCode on the free beta. For comparison, Claude Opus 5.5 got the same brief in Claude Code.
Four minutes
Beam finished in 3 minutes 57 seconds: 40 steps, 39 of them shell commands, and a 622-line game. Its README said every part works, banana included. By its own benchmark table it is the weaker coder (Terminal Bench v2.1: 80.1, against DeepSeek V4.1 Flash at 90.6), but it was fast.
Then I played it. A steered right and D steered left. The steering snapped to full turn the instant a key went down. The banana could be picked up but never dropped: useItem() handled boost and shell and had no banana branch at all. I still won from last place in 35 seconds, because the rivals crawled.
Beam never opened its own game. Both of its runs hold only shell commands, no browser and no screenshot.
The paid one
Claude took 14 minutes 47 seconds. It drove its own game in a headless browser, took ten screenshots, and found and fixed three bugs before it stopped. At API prices that run would cost $2.44; I ran it on my subscription.
One note
So I sent Beam one message in its original session, listing the three faults. It fixed them in 66 seconds: the steering signs flipped, the banana drops, and the turn rate came down from 3.0 to 1.9. Still free.
The verdict
First try, Beam met three of my seven asks. After one note it meets six. The rivals race now, though karts drive straight through each other, and touch controls are not tested yet.
Is a free model good enough to build with? Yes, for a first draft, if I do the testing myself. Beam writes fast and claims a lot; the gap between its README and its game is the part I have to close.
Top comments (0)