I have been extensively using OpenCode over the past few months.
Overall, it has been working very well for me – but one issue I struggled with is to determine what model to use.
There are hundreds to choose from, and, interestingly, what seems to be straightforward choices often do not work.
I especially struggled with getting Gemini to work. It produces very subpar code and would often get stuck.
Models are evolving quickly, so it's not very useful for me to give you a specific model to use. Instead, I thought it's best I share the strategies I use to determine which model to use.
I'll give them in the order I find most effective to least effective:
(1) OpenRouter Statistics
A good indication if a model 'works well' for OpenCode is what other user's are using!
OpenRouter keeps statistics on what models are used for various app, so that feels like an obvious starting point.
For whatever reason, OpenCode is filtered out in many views in OpenRouter. However, OpenRouter still keeps statistics for OpenCode, they can be found here:
https://openrouter.ai/apps?url=https%3A%2F%2Fopencode.ai%2F
This is the snapshot as of today:
It seems like users are having success with the Anthropic models as well as some open source models, like Kimi K2.5 and MiniMax2.5.
Here it is good to keep in mind that OpenCode makes certain models available for free – as of writing this, Kimi K.24 for instance, is free to use.
(2) OpenCode Go Models
OpenCode has an offering called OpenCode Go, that's a fixed price per-month subscription that includes usage of a certain set of models.
Chances are, models included here will work well with OpenCode.
As of writing this, the following models are included:
- GLM-5
- Kimi K2.5
- MiniMax M2.5
(3) OpenCode Documentation
OpenCode includes a number of model recommendation in their documentation:
I'm putting this one last, since it included Gemini 3 Pro – which I never got to work correctly.
(4) Experiment!
In any case, OpenCode makes it easy to switch between models. So when using an aggregator service like OpenRouter or OpenCode Zen, it makes sense to quickly try out different models.
Just be mindful that some providers will use your data for training – so always best to check the model first before giving it a try.
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