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Payment Strategies
If you're not self-hosting, then you're using someone else's electricity and hardware to run an LLM. If you want serious LLM access for daily coding work, you've gotta pay for it. There are really only two ways to pay:
- Pay-per-token API access via provider keys and
/connect - Subscription-based provider access, for example ChatGPT Plus/Pro, Gemini AI Ultra, or Claude Max
Pay Per Token
With pay-per-token pricing, every request has a direct unit cost. Base-tier, uncached prices from OpenCode Console are, at the time of writing:
| Model | Model ID | Input (per 1M) | Output (per 1M) |
|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Free | deepseek-v4.1-flash-free |
Free | Free |
| GPT 5.6 Sol | gpt-5.6-sol |
$4.00 | $20.00 |
| Claude Opus 5 | claude-opus-5 |
$5.00 | $25.00 |
| Claude Fable 5.1 | claude-fable-5-1 |
$10.00 | $50.00 |
Usage-based pricing may be the most cost-effective option if you're not using many tokens and you're using cheaper models. Pay-per-token is also typically the only option when you build AI into a live product, such as your favorite baked-salmon-loving bear.
Subscription Access
Many providers also offer subscriptions for coding, but the tools they support vary by plan. Subscriptions simplify billing and reduce the chance that you accidentally light a ton of money on fire, but there are tradeoffs:
- Some high-tier subscriptions cost around $100-$500/month, which is a lot if you aren't using at least that much API-equivalent value.
- Subscriptions are not actually unlimited. They are still throttled and rate-limited. That said, if you're coding regularly, they can save you a lot of money. I get well over $1,000 of usage out of my $200/month subscription, so for me it's a no-brainer.
Anthropic does not allow third-party agents like OpenCode to use Claude Pro/Max subscription credentials. If you want to use one of those subscriptions, you have to use the official Claude app or Claude Code.
You can still use Claude on a pay-per-token basis through OpenCode. You just can't use the subscriptions. Major bummer.