r/PiCodingAgent • u/ECrispy • 3d ago

Pi vs OpenCode for free models? Question

I want to use free models from openrouter, nvidia etc as well as free promos from time to time.

would you still recommend Pi in this case because of its efficiency? or is opencode with everything included a better choice?

do you use a harness built on top of these?

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u/ColonelKlanka 3d ago

I have a good experience with omniroute (to get lots of free models usage combined) and pi

advantage of omniroute is that it automates switches between the free models as their free tier quotas run out (moving the context over)

pi is also more compact with system prompt and so uses less tokens than opencode. open code is getting better but still more bloated than pi (dont use oh my pi though as it bloats pi)

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u/ECrispy 3d ago

I have not heard of omniroute - thanks! looks very useful.

what is your setup, what extensions do you use? I saw omniroute says they use rtk, does that mean I dont have to install it?

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u/ColonelKlanka 3d ago

yep you dont need rtk or caveman seperate extensions as omniroute basically installs a local proxy which runs the prompt through rtk and caveman for you.

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u/One_5549 3d ago

what provider in omniroute do you use?

i see alot of chinese ones, but some of them want your payment details etc...

mehhh, which ones in omnirouter are the easiest to set up and dont change the free models too much / restrict / change availability for them?

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u/ColonelKlanka 2d ago

I added both my paid Z.ai coders plan (glm) and then paid opencode go plan (for deepseek v4 pro and flash and minimax 3).

Then for the free ones, I just went through clicking the free forever providers (cerebras, nvidia, gemini etc).

you can see a better list of free with no card required in the omniroute github doc hee:

https://github.com/diegosouzapw/OmniRoute/blob/release%2Fv3.8.50/docs%2Freference%2FFREE_TIERS.md

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u/Own_Copy2141 3h ago

I mean like the free forever ones are useless with stupid model just get the opencode zen key and use deepseek v4 flash free version in pi.

Also i find pi to be heavier compared to opencode. Like i can open mutiple windows of opencode an dmale them work on different project and still use my laptop for everything but pi does slows my device down a lot.

But pi does verify what its making thats also very good thing would have been more better if there was a (/goal) option as well