Is OpenCode really free?

Yes. OpenCode is open source: the code is public and installing it costs nothing. At most you pay for hosting if you put it on a server, often a few euros a month. Cursor Pro, on the other hand, costs €17 a month.

Do I need to code to install OpenCode?

No. The level is beginner and the install takes about 10 minutes with the prompt from the page: Claude does the work, you answer its questions.

How is it different from Cursor Pro?

OpenCode does most of what Cursor Pro does, without a subscription, and your data stays with you. The point by point comparison is on the page.

Yes. With an open source tool installed on your side, your files stay on your machine or your server. Nobody can close your account or change the price.

Free alternative

Free alternative to Cursor Pro

Cursor Pro costs €17 a month. Here are the 2 open source tools that replace it for free, best one first.

Public entry price, taken from Cursor Pro’s website (cursor.com). Over a year, that is €204 that stays in your pocket.

What replaces Cursor Pro

The main alternative

OpenCode

🟢 Beginner⏱️ ~10 min to installSave €17/mo

OpenCode does the same job as Cursor: you ask for a change, it reads your project, writes the code, runs the commands. The difference is that it forces neither an editor nor a model on you. It lives in your terminal, in a desktop app still in beta, or in an extension for VS Code, Cursor and Windsurf. On the model side it talks to more than 75 providers: Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, OpenRouter, GitHub Copilot, and the models running on your own machine through Ollama, LM Studio or llama.cpp. Two agents ship with it and swap with one key: build, which edits your files, and plan, which reads without touching anything. The code is MIT licensed, with over 200,000 stars on GitHub and commits every day. One useful piece of history: the repo used to be sst/opencode, the team moved to the name Anomaly, and the GitHub address followed.

Loucash’s verdict on OpenCode

8/10

This is the serious alternative to Cursor, and it is genuinely free software. MIT license, over 200,000 stars, commits every day, a one command install. It runs in the terminal, in a desktop app still in beta, or inside your editor through an extension. And it talks to more than 75 model providers, from the biggest down to the one running on your own hard drive. The honest part: the tool is free, the tokens are not. Cursor charges you €17 a month and opens its tap. Here you pay for what you use, and one heavy day with a big model can cost more than a whole month of Cursor. The team sells two optional extras: Zen, usage based billing resold at cost, and Go, a €9 a month subscription for open models. Two more details matter. Anthropic forbids using a Claude Pro or Max subscription here, while ChatGPT Plus, GitHub Copilot and GitLab Duo connect with nothing to configure. And two serious flaws were fixed in January 2026, one of them a local server that allowed running commands: stay up to date, that part is not optional. Do not mix up the repos, three of them carry this name. The living project is anomalyco/opencode: it used to be sst/opencode before the team moved to the name Anomaly, and the old address redirects. Another repo, opencode-ai/opencode, has been archived since 2025 and its successor is called Crush, at Charm. Beyond that, this is for you if you already code with an agent and the closed subscription is starting to bother you.

Who it is for: You code with Cursor or an equivalent agent, and you want to keep your editor, choose your model, and pay for what you use instead of a fixed subscription.

See the full page →See the tool ↗

Also in the library
Hermes Agent
🟡 Intermediate⏱️ ~15 min to installSave €23/mo
Hermes is an agent that learns. What sets it apart from a regular chatbot is its loop: it builds its own skills from what you have it do, improves them through use, searches its past conversations and gradually builds a model of who you are. It lives where you already are: Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, or in your terminal. It runs on a €4 server just as well as on your machine, and it accepts any model: yours running locally, OpenRouter, OpenAI, your own endpoint. Where ChatGPT, Claude or Cursor sell you a monthly subscription for a model they picked, Hermes lets you plug in whatever you want behind it, including a local model that costs nothing and lets nothing leave your machine.
See the full page →See the tool ↗

The prompt that installs OpenCode

Paste this prompt into Claude: it checks the repository, asks you its questions and installs the tool step by step.

Installe OpenCode sur ma machine en partant de zéro (l'agent de code open source, dépôt GitHub anomalyco/opencode). Détecte d'abord mon système d'exploitation, puis utilise la bonne méthode officielle : le script d'installation proposé sur opencode.ai, Homebrew avec le dépôt officiel de l'équipe sur Mac et Linux, Scoop ou Chocolatey sur Windows, ou npm si Node est déjà installé. Vérifie ensuite que la commande opencode répond et affiche sa version. Explique-moi alors le choix du cerveau, en deux options claires : une clé API chez un fournisseur comme Anthropic, OpenAI ou OpenRouter, et dans ce cas je paye ce que je consomme ; ou un modèle qui tourne sur ma machine avec Ollama ou LM Studio, gratuit mais limité par la puissance de mon ordinateur. Dis-moi laquelle convient à ma machine et à mon usage, puis configure celle que je choisis avec la commande de connexion prévue dans OpenCode, et écris le fichier opencode.json si c'est nécessaire. Termine par un test : place-toi dans un petit dossier de code, lance OpenCode, demande-lui de résumer le projet, et montre-moi que la réponse arrive et que le coût de la session s'affiche. Explique chaque étape simplement, je débute.

Review the GitHub repository and check whether it is safe to install given my machine and my infrastructure. Ask me as many questions as possible, using widgets, to clarify my request and be as precise as you can.

Frequently asked questions

Is OpenCode really free?: Yes. OpenCode is open source: the code is public and installing it costs nothing. At most you pay for hosting if you put it on a server, often a few euros a month. Cursor Pro, on the other hand, costs €17 a month.
Do I need to code to install OpenCode?: No. The level is beginner and the install takes about 10 minutes with the prompt from the page: Claude does the work, you answer its questions.
How is it different from Cursor Pro?: OpenCode does most of what Cursor Pro does, without a subscription, and your data stays with you. The point by point comparison is on the page.
Do I own my data?: Yes. With an open source tool installed on your side, your files stay on your machine or your server. Nobody can close your account or change the price.