OpenCode vs Aider (2026): 209k Stars vs 49k, MIT vs Apache, and Which BYOK Agent to Pick

Summary

Both keep your code and keys local and avoid lock-in. OpenCode is the most-starred open-source coding agent, ahead of openai/codex (125,963) and gemini-cli (107,130). The choice comes down to temperament. Aider keeps a lean, git-first loop. OpenCode gives you a bigger agent surface and a larger provider menu.

What Changed Since June 2026

Stars, License, and Maintenance Cadence

OpenCode lives at anomalyco/opencode (the old sst/opencode URL redirects) with 209,405 stars, 27,620 forks, and an MIT license. Its homepage claims 950 contributors and 16M monthly developers. Releases land every few days: v1.18.30 on September 9, v1.18.31 on September 14, and v1.18.32 on September 21, 2026. A second line, OpenCode V2, ships on npm as @opencode/cli. It reached 2.0.14 on September 22, 2026. V2 tags do not show up as GitHub Releases, so the Releases page still reads 1.18.x.

Aider lives at Aider-AI/aider with 49,118 stars under Apache-2.0. It is dormant. Nobody has committed to main since May 22, 2026, and there were no releases or commits from June through September 2026:

Aider still runs, and it connects to any OpenAI-compatible endpoint with the openai/ model prefix. The homepage still recommends Claude 3.7 Sonnet, DeepSeek R1, o1, o3-mini, and GPT-4o. Treat that list as history and pick the model yourself. If you want the unreleased main-branch model settings, install from git instead of PyPI.

Install Commands

OpenCode also installs via Bun, pnpm, Yarn, pacman/paru, Chocolatey, Scoop, Mise, and Docker (ghcr.io/anomalyco/opencode). On Windows, OpenCode's docs recommend WSL over a native install, and the Bun install path does not work there. V1 and V2 both install as the opencode command and do not sit side by side. The V2 curl installer replaces the V1 binary. V2 has breaking changes: V1 plugins do not run on the new plugin API, the server API changed, and TUI settings move to one global cli.json (migrated automatically). V2 reads your V1 opencode.json as-is. Windows package managers do not support V2 yet. Aider on Windows uses the PowerShell one-liner powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://aider.chat/install.ps1 | iex".

Models and Configuration

Both are bring-your-own-key and model-agnostic. The difference is breadth and how you wire models in.

OpenCode supports 75+ LLM providers through the Models.dev catalog, plus local models via Ollama, LM Studio, and llama.cpp. You can also log in with GitHub Copilot or a ChatGPT Plus/Pro account. Two optional paid plans sit on top. OpenCode Zen is a curated pay-as-you-go model list the team benchmarks for agentic coding (the V2 docs call it Console). OpenCode Go costs $10/month and covers open models like GLM-5.3, Kimi K3, DeepSeek V4, and Qwen3.8, with a monthly dollar limit per model, a 5-hour cap of 20% of that limit, and a weekly cap of 50%. Any OpenAI-compatible endpoint plugs in via JSON:

{"provider":{"myprovider":{
  "npm":"@ai-sdk/openai-compatible",
  "options":{"baseURL":"https://api.myprovider.com/v1"},
  "models":{ ... }
}}}

OpenCode ships two primary agents. Build has every tool enabled. Plan sets edit and bash to ask, so it can read and propose but needs approval to change anything. Press Tab to cycle between them. Three subagents handle side work: General (multi-step tasks), Explore (read-only codebase search), and Scout (read-only docs and dependency research). Each agent can run a different model, and each permission key takes allow, ask, or deny. In V2's optional native config, permission becomes an ordered permissions array, bash is renamed shell, task becomes subagent, and write/patch fold into edit.

Aider connects per run with flags. You pass the model and key on the command line and switch by changing the flags:

aider --model sonnet --api-key anthropic=<key>
aider --model deepseek --api-key deepseek=<key>

Aider supports most providers and local models via Ollama or any OpenAI-compatible API. Its architect mode splits work between a planning model and an editing model. On the polyglot benchmark, o3 (high) as architect with gpt-4.1 as editor scored 78.2% for $17.55.

Git Behavior: The Core Design Split

Aider treats git as the interface. Every edit lands as a commit with a Conventional Commits message written by the --weak-model. If a file has uncommitted changes, Aider commits those first so its edit stays separate. /undo reverts the last Aider commit. Turn the behavior off with --no-auto-commits and --no-dirty-commits. For attribution, --attribute-co-authored-by adds a Co-authored-by trailer instead of rewriting the author and committer fields.

OpenCode does not commit for you. Its /undo (ctrl+x u) removes the last message, every response after it, and the file changes. /redo (ctrl+x r) brings them back. Both use git under the hood, so the project must be a git repository or undo will not work. You write the commits yourself or ask the agent to.

Aider Polyglot Leaderboard: Which Model to Run

Aider's polyglot benchmark is 225 exercises across C++, Go, Java, JavaScript, Python, and Rust. It measures whether a model can edit code correctly in Aider's formats, and it is a fair proxy for any BYOK agent. The leaderboard is stale. The last results were added October 3, 2025 (DeepSeek-V3.2), and the page footer reads November 20, 2025. No 2026 model has been tested, so GPT-6, Fable 5.1, GLM-5.3, and DeepSeek V4 are missing.

The cost column is the useful part. DeepSeek-V3.2 Reasoner scored 74.2% for $1.30 across all 225 tasks. GPT-5 high scored 88.0% for $29.08, 22x the cost for 13.8 more points. o3-pro cost $146.32 and scored lower than GPT-5 medium. Open-weight models close most of the gap at a fraction of the spend, and the same math applies inside OpenCode.

Where OpenCode Wins

Where Aider Wins

Aider vs OpenCode vs Pi vs Claude Code

Searches for this comparison often add Pi or Claude Code. Here is where they sit, all checked on GitHub on September 22, 2026.

Pi moved from badlogic/pi-mono to earendil-works/pi and installs with npm install -g --ignore-scripts @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent (Node 22.19+) or curl -fsSL https://pi.dev/install.sh | sh. It is closer to Aider in spirit, small and scriptable, but it ships weekly. Cline 4.0 (June 26, 2026) moved the extension onto the shared Cline SDK runtime and turned command auto-approval off by default. See OpenCode vs Claude Code for that matchup in depth.

Running DeepSeek and Open Models With Either Tool

Both tools are bring-your-own-endpoint, so the model backend is your choice and it sets the quality ceiling. The polyglot numbers above show why DeepSeek is the default budget pick. For open-weight models, the provider matters as much as the model.

Many serverless providers quantize to fp8 to cut cost, which can degrade output. Morph Open Source Models serve DeepSeek with 16-bit (bf16) activations, no fp8 or int8 quantization, so responses match the reference weights. Morph also runs codegen-tuned speculative decoding and custom inference kernels for coding-agent traffic.

Point OpenCode at it as an OpenAI-compatible provider, or pass it to Aider by setting OPENAI_API_BASE and OPENAI_API_KEY and running aider --model openai/morph-dsv41flash. See pricing and the model list.

Decision Framework

Frequently Asked Questions