Best AI Coding Agents in 2026: 13 Tools Compared and Which One to Use

A coding agent isn't autocomplete: it's a program that reads your repository, edits files, runs commands, and commits on its own. As of August 2026 the three most used are Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, and Cursor. If you want a real free tier, Codex is the only one of the three that has one. If you want open source, none of the three is. Below: all thirteen compared, with prices checked on official sites, licenses checked in the actual repository, and a verdict for each.

Last verified: October 27, 2026. We added GPT-6.1 Terra (released October 26, 2026) to the model section and a Cohere note on running open weight models yourself, both checked against the primary posts on October 27, 2026. On October 26, 2026 we added Kimi K3.1 Pro (released October 23, 2026) to the model section, checked against Moonshot's launch post, Kimi's API docs and pricing page, and Artificial Analysis on October 26, 2026. We also added an update on the OpenCode Console breach (disclosed October 17, 2026) and a short key hygiene note. We checked it against OpenCode's own post on X from October 17, coverage from The Hacker News, TechCrunch and BleepingComputer on October 19, and OpenCode's changelog and GitHub security advisories page on October 26, 2026. On October 22, 2026 we added two budget models to the model section, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (released October 17, 2026) and MiniMax M3.1 Flash (released October 19, 2026), and rechecked Google's Antigravity models page, which now says GPT-OSS-120b will be removed on November 2, 2026. All three were checked on primary sources on October 22, 2026. On October 16, 2026 we added Meta's Muse Code, Muse Wonder (launched October 12, 2026), the Muse Spark Open self host option (October 15, 2026), the Codex CLI background daemon warning, OpenCode 2.0, and Gemini 4 Argon inside Antigravity CLI. Earlier, we rechecked the model and IDE news through September 30, 2026: OpenAI's GPT-6.1 Sol (DevDay, September 29), Claude Sonnet 5.5 for coding (September 28), Android Studio Bring Your Own Agent in Rabbit 2 canary (September 24), plus the earlier Grok 4.7 and Claude Opus 5.5 updates. Prices and licenses in the big table were last checked on official product sites on September 8, 2026, and we haven't rechecked the other eleven since (Muse Code's row was checked on Meta's pages on October 16, 2026). This space changes weekly, so if you find a comparison whose verification date is more than two months old, distrust the table. Including ours.

What exactly is an AI coding agent?

It's a program that works on your project with some autonomy: it reads the files, decides what to change, writes the code, runs the tests, and retries when something fails. The difference from a classic assistant is the verb. An assistant suggests; an agent acts.

That difference carries a consequence worth understanding before you install anything: a coding agent runs with your permissions. It can delete files, push, burn tokens, and break things. Every tool here has some approval mechanism, but none of them excuses you from reviewing what it did.

And there's a second distinction almost no comparison makes, which is why this list mixes things that look incomparable: not all of these are agents. Some are the agent; others are the house the agent lives in.

What types of coding agents exist?

Flattening all of these into one "best AI tools" list is the mistake nearly everyone makes, and it's why so many comparisons recommend things that don't compete with each other. An orchestrator doesn't replace an agent: it requires one. That's also why we keep the rest of the tools we've tested, from assistants to automation platforms, in a separate AI tools hub instead of forcing them into this ranking.

Comparison table: 13 coding agents (prices checked September 8, 2026; Muse Code and OpenCode October 16, 2026)

Two readings of that table, because they're the ones most people skip:

The free tier barely exists. Of the three most used coding agents, only Codex has a genuine free tier. Claude Code has never had one. And Gemini CLI had one and lost it: Google cut free access on June 18, 2026.

Open source doesn't mean free, and free doesn't mean open. Gemini CLI is Apache-2.0 and you can't use it today without paying. OpenClaw is MIT and free, but the token bill is yours. Claude Code has a public repository with over 141,000 stars and is not open source: that repo doesn't contain the CLI's source code, only the changelog, examples, and the issue tracker.

Terminal agents

These go furthest without supervision, and this is where the real 2026 fight is.

Claude Code

Anthropic's agent, born as a CLI and now a single engine across many surfaces: terminal, VS Code and JetBrains extensions, desktop app, web, mobile, Slack, and CI.

Pricing. No free tier. Pro $20/mo ($17/mo billed annually), Max 5x $100/mo, Max 20x $200/mo, Team from $20/seat. Pay as you go alternative with an API key.

What doesn't get said. Limits aren't token based but 5 hour session windows plus a weekly cap, and Anthropic doesn't publish the numbers. Anthropic's temporary +50% weekly usage promotion for Claude Code ended on September 13, 2026. Since September 14, standard weekly limits sit 25% above the baseline from before the promotion, which is less than the promo gave you. The 5 hour session limits didn't change.

The default model changed on September 22, 2026. Claude Code 2.1.280 added Claude Opus 5.5 as the default Opus model and moved Pro and Team Standard plans from Sonnet to Opus, matching Max. So "Pro gets the weaker model" is no longer true by default, though Max still gives you 5x or 20x Pro's usage per session. Claude Fable 5.1, Anthropic's most expensive model, is where the plans still split: on Max it can use up to 50% of your weekly limits, on Pro it runs on usage credits.

Sonnet 5.5 still matters for coding cost. Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 5.5 on September 28, 2026 as the faster, lower-cost complement to Opus 5.5. On Anthropic's own numbers it scores 70.6% on Terminal-Bench 4.0 (against Sonnet 5's 10.3%) and 55.5% on CursorBench 4.0, within about two points of Opus 5.5. List price is $2 input and $10 output per million tokens, API id claude-sonnet-5-5. Use it for well-scoped everyday coding and bug fixes when the Opus bill hurts; keep Opus (or Fable) for sprawling, open-ended agent runs. Everyday docs and slides live in a separate guide: Claude Sonnet 5.5 for everyday work.

It only runs Claude models. The "third parties" in its docs (Amazon Bedrock, Microsoft Foundry, Google Cloud) are billing and infrastructure routes, not other models.

Verdict: best if you already pay for Pro or Max and work in the terminal on large repositories. Avoid it if you need an auditable license, vendor independence, or predictable budget.

OpenAI Codex

OpenAI's current agent, unrelated to the 2021 Codex model. Ships as a Rust CLI, an IDE extension, a desktop app, and a cloud environment that opens pull requests.

Pricing. Free $0, Go $8/mo, Plus $20/mo, Pro from $100/mo, Business $20/user/mo billed annually.

The license has a catch, and it's an honest one. The openai/codex repository is genuinely Apache-2.0, verified in its LICENSE file. But that covers the client only: models and service are proprietary and paid. Without a subscription or API key, the open binary does nothing.

Dated warning. Since August 31, 2026, GPT-5.4 and GPT-5.4 mini are no longer available in Codex for users who sign in with ChatGPT. Any comparison still recommending them is stale.

GPT-6.1 Sol is the cost pick under Codex. OpenAI shipped it on September 29, 2026 (DevDay). In ChatGPT it's in Work and Codex for Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu; it was not yet in ordinary Chat at launch. Developers call it as gpt-6.1-sol. See the model section below for when to pick it over Astra.

Check the background daemon before you roll it out. Since Codex CLI 0.157.0, opening an interactive codex session starts a persistent background daemon by default. It keeps running after you close every Codex window, runs from its own copy of the Codex package under ~/.codex/packages/app-server-daemon, and starts an updater that checks for new releases and restarts the backend on its own. Users report it can keep the proxy settings of whichever session started it. The open issue asks OpenAI to make it opt in. Until that happens, here's the opt out the reporter documents:

codex features disable daemon_auto_start
codex app-server daemon stop

The same report notes that daemon stop can leave the updater process running, so check for a leftover pid-update-loop process afterward. If you manage machines for a team, put that flag in your standard setup. Source: openai/codex issue #48195.

Verdict: best if you already pay for ChatGPT and want the same agent in terminal, IDE, and cloud, with the only real free entry point of the big three. Avoid it if you expected a model agnostic agent: its CLI only speaks the Responses API, so endpoints that only speak Chat Completions stopped working.

Gemini CLI (and its replacement, Antigravity CLI)

Here's news most comparisons haven't absorbed yet, and it invalidates their recommendations.

Gemini CLI exists, is Apache-2.0, and its code is still free and compilable. But as of June 18, 2026, Google stopped serving requests for the free tier, Google AI Pro, and Google AI Ultra. The cutoff shipped with no grace period and broke scripts, GitHub Actions, and CI pipelines. Today it only works with a Code Assist Standard or Enterprise license, or a paid API key.

Its official replacement is Antigravity CLI, invoked as agy. It's multi model (Gemini 4 Argon, Gemini 3.8 Flash, Claude Sonnet 5.5, Claude Opus 5.5, and GPT-OSS-120b, which Google's models page says will be removed on November 2, 2026; Google retired Gemini 3.1 Pro, 3.6 Flash, and 3.7 Flash from consumer plans in October 2026, though they're still listed for Enterprise, per a Google forum moderator and Google's Antigravity models page) but it is not open source: it's a closed binary.

New on October 13, 2026: Gemini 4 Argon inside Antigravity. Google rolled its frontier model Gemini 4 Argon into the Antigravity desktop app and Antigravity CLI. Businesses get it through the API on the Gemini platform and inside Antigravity on eligible Gemini Enterprise subscriptions.

Which consumer plan gets it? Google's own messages conflicted, so here is the record. The Antigravity announcement, as we read it on October 16, 2026, says Argon is rolling out for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. At launch, though, early user reports in Google's developer forum said Antigravity offered Argon only on Ultra, and some users were still saying so on October 15. Later that day, a moderator on that forum posted that Argon is now available to paid Pro subscribers, with a separate weekly Argon quota on top of the regular Gemini quota. Our reading: Ultra has it, paid Pro now has it with a weekly cap, and promotional or trial Pro plans may not. Check the model picker on your own account before you pay for an upgrade.

Google also shared numbers from its internal version of Antigravity. These are Google reported figures that we can't verify independently: over four weeks, a 35% increase in agentic code and a 30% decrease in post submit rollbacks. Sources: Google Antigravity blog, Google AI Developers Forum.

Verdict: Google traded an open, free CLI for a closed, paid one. With Code Assist Enterprise, Gemini CLI is still a solid auditable option. If you came from the free tier, your move today is Codex.

Muse Code (Meta)

Meta's terminal coding agent, invoked as muse. It plans, edits, and runs commands with approvals and an OS sandbox on from the first run, and it runs on macOS, Linux, and Windows (on Windows it uses PowerShell, and voice input isn't available).

Pricing. Two ways to pay. Pay as you go bills per token through your Meta Model API key. Or you subscribe: Everyday Usage $5/mo, High Usage $15/mo, Power Usage $50/mo (20x the Everyday limit), and Maximum Usage $200/mo (80x the Everyday limit). There's no free tier. Subscription usage only counts inside the Muse Code CLI while you're signed in with your Meta Model API account.

Which model you get depends on the plan. Meta launched Muse Wonder on October 12, 2026, on Muse Code and the Meta Model API at $4 input, $0.20 cached input, and $20 output per million tokens (API id muse-wonder-1.0, 1M token context). Every plan includes Muse Wonder. Muse Wonder Full, which Meta calls its most advanced model, is only available inside Muse Code on the Power Usage and Maximum Usage plans. You can't call it through the API.

You can also self host it. On October 15, 2026, Meta released open weights for Muse Spark Open, an 816B parameter model (42B active) with a 1M token context window that Meta says is built for coding and agent work. Weights are on Hugging Face, Amazon SageMaker AI, Google Cloud Model Garden, and Microsoft Foundry Models, and hosted APIs run it at Baseten, Fireworks AI, Groq, Modal, Nebius, OpenRouter, and Together AI. The hardware bar is high: Meta's own desktop path is two Apple M5 Ultra Mac Studios with MLX, and Meta says it tested Muse Code running on that setup. The license is the Muse Model License with limited commercial terms, not Apache or MIT, so read it before you ship with it. Source: Meta's Muse Spark Open post.

What doesn't get said. Meta's pricing docs say Muse Code subscriptions default to Contributor mode, which lets Meta use your prompts, code, and files to train future models. You can switch it off in settings, and you should check that before you point it at a client repo. It only runs Meta's models. And on the Maximum Usage plan there's nothing to upgrade to: when you hit the limit, you wait for it to reset.

Verdict: worth a trial if you want a Claude Code style terminal agent at a lower entry price, or you want Muse Wonder Full for long agent runs. Avoid it if you need a model agnostic agent, an auditable license, or you can't accept training on your code by default.

OpenCode

An open source coding agent you run in your terminal, a desktop app, or an IDE extension, and you bring the model. OpenCode says it connects to 75+ LLM providers through Models.dev, local models included, and it can also sign in with your GitHub Copilot or ChatGPT Plus/Pro account. The repo, anomalyco/opencode, is MIT licensed and has over 200k GitHub stars (checked October 16, 2026).

What 2.0 changes. OpenCode calls 2.0 a major overhaul built on the experience of its millions of daily users (that's OpenCode's own claim). Per the launch note:

• One background service. The TUI, the web interface, and the desktop app all talk to a single local process, and scripts using the new @opencode/client package find it on their own.
• A rewritten server API. OpenCode says the old one "grew haphazardly," so they started over.
• Code Mode. It turns MCP servers and OpenAPI endpoints into functions the model calls inside a script, so it can chain tools in one round trip. It's on by default for every MCP server.
• Background work. Subagents and shell commands can run in the background while you keep prompting, and a hotkey moves a slow foreground task there.
• Plugins everywhere. Nearly every 2.0 feature is an internal plugin (80+ of them), they hot reload, and TUI plugins are now stable.
• An SDK. @opencode/sdk lets you embed the same code that powers the CLI. OpenCode says it's still in development.

What doesn't get said. The upgrade breaks things. 1.0 plugins don't work in 2.0, the server API is completely different, and the tui.json config moves. You opt in with opencode upgrade --major from the latest 1.x release; 1.x installs aren't moved to 2.x automatically. The launch note publishes no benchmarks, so there's nothing to compare it on there.

Console breach update (October 2026). On the night of October 16, 2026, an intruder reached a legacy system behind OpenCode Console, OpenCode's optional hosted service. Console is where a team saves its own OpenAI, Anthropic or Google key so members can use the models without seeing it. Per The Hacker News, OpenCode says keys saved there "may have been exposed" for 1.4% of Console users, all of whom had an outside provider linked. OpenCode emailed those users on October 17 and told them to revoke and replace the keys at each provider. Anyone who got no email was not affected, OpenCode says.

Dax Raad, one of OpenCode's founders, wrote on X: "Note this is the OpenCode Console, not OpenCode itself, those keys never come to us." He was talking about keys added in the CLI or desktop app. Some users report unauthorized charges, from several hundred dollars to about $1,700 on one account. Those are users' own accounts, and OpenCode has not said that any key was copied or used. TechCrunch reports that Anthropic and Google blocked the keys they believed were exposed, OpenAI said it worked with OpenCode to restore access and refund credits, and OpenCode said refunds were underway.

What doesn't get said about the breach. OpenCode has not published how the intruder got in, how many keys the system held, or how many users the 1.4% represents. It calls the incident related to a "large scale distillation attack" but has not explained the link, and TechCrunch notes that some skeptics call that framing an overstretch. As of October 26, 2026, we found no postmortem on OpenCode's changelog or its GitHub security advisories page, and OpenCode described the incident as ongoing on October 17. Sources: The Hacker News (October 19, 2026), TechCrunch (October 19, 2026), BleepingComputer (October 19, 2026), OpenCode on X (October 17, 2026).

Key hygiene for any agent where you paste in your own provider key. If you saved a key in OpenCode Console, revoke it at the provider, create a new one, and check your billing back to October 16. For every other tool:

• One key per tool. A leak is easier to trace and cheaper to cut off.
• A spend limit or alert at the provider. A cap inside the tool can't stop requests that never pass through it.
• Revoke at the provider. Deleting a key from the tool doesn't cancel it, and a copied key keeps working until the provider revokes it.

Verdict: pick it over Claude Code or Codex if you want model choice and a license you can audit. That holds for the open source CLI and desktop app, where Raad says your keys stay on your machine. It doesn't cover keys saved in Console, so read the update above first. Wait before upgrading if you rely on 1.0 plugins or scripts against the old server API.

The agent inside the editor

Cursor

Proprietary editor based on VS Code with agents built in. Since version 3.0 the product revolves around running several agents in parallel (local, worktrees, cloud, SSH) rather than around the classic editor.

Pricing. Hobby $0 with "limited agent requests" (Anysphere does not publish concrete free tier numbers). Pro $20/mo including $20 of third party model usage, Pro+ $60 including $70, Ultra $200 including $400.

That "includes $X of usage" model is the most important practical difference from Claude Code: you know exactly how much you've consumed, but the bill goes variable the moment you exceed it.

It's the most agnostic of the big ones: its own Composer model, SpaceXAI's Grok line (Grok 4.7, with Grok 4.6 still available), plus Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Moonshot, and Z.ai. Cursor still describes Composer as its fast, cost efficient model for everyday coding.

The thing to know before you commit: On 14 August 2026 Cursor published an official post stating it is now part of SpaceX (previously reported only as a June 16 agreement for Anysphere). Grok models now land in Cursor on day one: Grok 4.7 went live there on September 21, 2026, the same day SpaceXAI announced it. That's not a value judgment: it's a change of ownership that can affect pricing and available models, and you're picking a daily driver.

Verdict: best if you want the most polished agent inside an editor you already know. Avoid it if you need auditable code, if your budget can't absorb a variable bill, or if your editor becoming a SpaceX subsidiary in August 2026 bothers you.

Android Studio (Bring Your Own Agent)

If you build Android apps, the editor itself just opened to third-party agents. On September 24, 2026 Google announced Bring Your Own Agent (BYOA) in the canary release of Android Studio Rabbit 2. You can plug in Anthropic's Claude Agent, OpenAI's Codex, or Google's Antigravity, wired through Agent Client Protocol (ACP), with Compose previews, Android SDK tools, and emulator control injected for the agent.

That's an IDE surface, not a thirteenth agent on the price table. Cursor stays the polished general-purpose agent IDE. Android Studio BYOA is the mobile-native house: pick it when you already live in Studio and want Claude Agent, Codex, or Antigravity next to the emulator. It's still canary preview, so treat it as early access, not a stable daily driver for a production team yet. Source: Google's Android Developers Blog.

Verdict: best if your day job is Android and you want your existing Claude, Codex, or Antigravity plan inside Studio. Avoid it (for now) if you need a stable, non-canary IDE agent: stay on Cursor or the CLI until Rabbit 2 leaves canary.

Orchestrators and workspaces

This category is only a few months old and solves a problem you only have once you use agents seriously: four open sessions and no idea which one is touching what.

Xirp

Spotify desktop app, in public beta since August 10, 2026, that manages Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, and Cursor sessions from a single interface. Each session runs in its own git worktree, so several agents work in parallel on the same repository without colliding. Persistence runs on tmux.

macOS only, no public pricing, and not open source: despite what many assumed from the Backstage precedent, Spotify's own documentation calls it proprietary. It doesn't orchestrate models, it orchestrates CLIs: you need them already installed and authenticated. As of 21 August 2026 Xirp also supports Cursor sessions in addition to Claude Code, Codex and Gemini CLI.

Verdict: interesting if you're on macOS and already have the four terminals problem. Premature for everything else: it's still beta, it only launched on August 10, 2026, and the only way to know if it survives is to wait.

Buzz

Jack Dorsey's workspace where AI agents are teammates rather than tools: they get their own channel, their own history, and they participate in the conversation. It's open source and built on open protocols, precisely the opposite bet from Xirp.

We broke it down in full in what Buzz is and how it works.

Cloudflare OS

Agent workspace under Apache 2.0, launched August 5, 2026, with sandboxed "gadgets" and "gatekeepers" for approving actions. The most ambitious of the three and the hardest to adopt today. Full analysis in what Cloudflare OS is.

Don't confuse it with the other launch from the same week: Cloudflare also shipped Kitesurf (August 6, 2026), and it is not an agent orchestrator. It's a headless browser written in Rust and WebAssembly, built so agents can browse without Chromium underneath. Different category, different problem.

The personal agent

OpenClaw

Not a coding agent, but people end up using it as one, so it belongs here. It's a self hosted runtime that routes messages between your chat apps (WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Slack, Discord) and the model you choose, with access to your shell, files, and browser.

MIT license verified in the LICENSE file, with no enterprise edition and no closed core. It's the most agnostic tool on this list: 50+ providers, including local models via Ollama, LM Studio, or vLLM.

Pricing. The software is free with no tiers. You pay the tokens of whichever provider you connect, plus hosting if you don't run it on your laptop (a typical VPS runs $3 to $50/mo).

And a warning that needs saying. Self hosting an agent with access to your shell and your WhatsApp carries real attack surface: a one click remote code execution vulnerability was reported in July 2026. If you're not going to read logs or audit the third party skills you install, this isn't your tool.

Verdict: best if you can administer a server and want an agent running on your keys and your data. Avoid it if "self hosted" sounds like a marketing word rather than a responsibility.

Grok Bot

Also not a coding agent, and that's why it comes last: it's a work agent. Announced by SpaceXAI (formerly xAI) on August 11, 2026, its pitch is different from everything above: it signs in to your applications from its own cloud computer and hands the finished work back to you.

We include it here because it marks the edge of the category: everything above writes code, this one uses applications. And because it raises the problem the rest of this list doesn't have yet: what happens to your credentials.

Pricing. Not sold separately: it's bundled with eligible Cursor plans (Pro, Pro+, Ultra), SuperGrok family plans, Cursor Teams (Standard/Premium), and Enterprise. See https://x.ai/bot. Token-based consumption may apply on top. No permanent free tier.

The thing to know. Its official documentation states that all your bots share one cloud computer, with files, browser sessions, and credentials available across the roster, and warns explicitly: "Do not use separate Bots as a security boundary."

Verdict: the most ambitious approach on this list, and also the one that asks the most of you. Before connecting it to anything corporate, read the full Grok Bot analysis, on what its fine print says about your credentials.

Stagehand

This one closes the list because it's the only entry that isn't a tool you use but a library you build with. It's Browserbase's SDK for letting a program drive a Chrome browser with natural language instructions instead of CSS selectors.

Its version 4, from August 10, 2026, is a rewrite: it drops Playwright as a dependency and moves the engine inside the browser as a Chrome extension.

Pricing. The SDK is MIT and free, and runs locally against your own Chrome. You pay separately for Browserbase's browser infrastructure (Developer $20/mo, Startup $99/mo) and for model tokens.

The thing to know. The version marketed as "the SDK for browser agents" is the same one that removes the agent() method. Its migration guide says so plainly: it's gone and nothing replaces it one for one. The reasoning is sound (every step of that agent was an inference call) but you want to know before migrating.

Verdict: for tests, Playwright, and free. For pages that change, nested iframes, or closed shadow DOM, Stagehand is objectively better. Full analysis in what is Stagehand.

Which model should run the agent? Grok 4.7, GPT-6.1 Sol, and peers

Picking the agent is half the decision. Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, and Codex all let you choose the model underneath, and on plans that bill by usage, that choice decides what you pay.

GPT-6.1 Sol (OpenAI, September 29, 2026)

OpenAI's cost-routing pick for agentic coding. GPT-6.1 Sol is an upgrade to GPT-6 Sol that OpenAI positions as near-Astra intelligence on coding, computer use, and professional work at one-fifth of Astra's standard input and output token prices. API id: gpt-6.1-sol. Standard API list price: $2 input, $0.10 cached input, $10 output per million tokens. GPT-6 Astra sits at $10 input and $50 output on the same OpenAI model pages, which matches the one-fifth claim.

When to pick Sol vs Astra. Use Sol when you're running high-volume agent loops (Codex, Cursor with OpenAI, your own harness) and the token bill is the constraint: you get near-Astra coding quality at about a fifth of Astra's standard rates, and cached input at $0.10 per million tokens helps long sessions that reuse context. Reach for Astra when the task is the hardest reasoning or research work and you'd rather pay the flagship rate than leave quality on the table. Compare both on your tasks; OpenAI's launch post says the same. Don't mix this up with the older GPT-6 Sol (September 22) or with the "GPT-5.6 Sol" row in SpaceXAI's Grok 4.7 table below: those are different model strings.

Availability at launch: ChatGPT Work and Codex for Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu; not yet in ordinary Chat. Developers get it through the API as gpt-6.1-sol.

GPT-6.1 Terra (OpenAI, October 26, 2026)

OpenAI's cheaper pick. GPT-6.1 Terra is a fast model that OpenAI says combines visual reasoning and precise computer use with clearer writing. API id: gpt-6.1-terra. Standard API list price: $1 input, $0.05 cached input, $5 output per million tokens. OpenAI says that is 50% lower than both GPT-5.6 Terra and GPT-6.1 Sol, which matches Sol's $2 and $10 above.

What OpenAI claims for coding. On Terminal-Bench 4.0 at maximum reasoning effort, OpenAI says Terra solves 50.3% of tasks, more than double GPT-5.6 Terra's published 21.5%. Those are OpenAI's numbers from its launch post. OpenAI's own advice is plain: for the most complex coding tasks, GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Astra remain the better choice.

When to pick Terra vs Sol. Use Terra when you run high volume agent loops on routine work and the token bill is the limit. In ChatGPT Work and Codex, OpenAI says the same usage allowance covers more tasks with Terra than with Sol or Astra. Step up to Sol when a task needs more judgment, and to Astra for the hardest work. Test them on your own repository before you switch a team, because a vendor score isn't a substitute for your code.

Availability at launch: Plus, Pro, Enterprise, and Edu users in ChatGPT Work and Codex. OpenAI's post doesn't list Business for Terra, unlike Sol. Developers get it through the API as gpt-6.1-terra.

Muse Wonder (Meta, October 12, 2026)

Meta's new model for long-running coding agents, multi-file work, and computer use. Muse Wonder costs $4 input, $0.20 cached input, and $20 output per million tokens on the Meta Model API (muse-wonder-1.0), the same list price as Claude Opus 5.5. Muse Wonder Full is only in Muse Code on the $50 and $200 plans. Meta says Muse Wonder Full tops coding benchmark leaderboards, "including DeepSWE and SWE-Marathon in independent third-party runs," outperforming every other model it evaluated. That's Meta's claim from its launch post. The post doesn't name who ran those tests. Sources: Meta's developer launch post, Meta's research post, and Model API pricing.

Budget picks: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 and MiniMax M3.1 Flash (October 2026)

Everything above is the expensive end. Two low cost models landed in the same week, and both are built to sit behind a coding agent.

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (October 17, 2026). DeepSeek upgraded its Flash model and kept the API name deepseek-flash, so existing setups get the new version with no code change. The weights are on Hugging Face under the MIT License, with a 1M token context window. DeepSeek's API takes both OpenAI format and Anthropic format requests (the Anthropic base URL is https://api.deepseek.com/anthropic), and its docs say you can use it as the backend model in tools like Claude Code, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode. On DeepSeek's own table it scores 42.3 on Terminal-Bench 4.0, run inside the Claude Code harness. That's DeepSeek's claim; independent runs hadn't landed when we checked. Sources: DeepSeek API changelog, DeepSeek API quick start.

MiniMax M3.1 Flash (October 19, 2026). MiniMax lists it at $0.15 input, $0.015 cached input and $0.60 output per million tokens, with a 1M token context window. It's available through the MiniMax API, the M Plan and MiniMax Code, MiniMax's own coding agent. MiniMax says the weights will be released later, so for now it's an API model, not an open one. Sources: MiniMax launch post, MiniMax pricing.

What you give up. Both lead with vendor benchmarks, not independent ones, so test them on your own repository before you move a team over. For context, MiniMax's $0.60 output price is a tenth of Grok 4.7's $6 and well under the $10 that GPT-6.1 Sol and Sonnet 5.5 charge. One caveat for DeepSeek: on October 20, 2026 the Department of Homeland Security published an order that removes DeepSeek products, and third party products built using DeepSeek implementations, from US federal civilian agency IT systems. If you build software for those agencies, don't put DeepSeek behind your agent. Source: Federal Register, October 20, 2026.

Running the weights yourself isn't a safety plan. It's easy to assume that an open weight model on your own machine can't send anything out. On October 26, 2026, Cohere published sandbox traces that cut against that. In Cohere's tests, Alibaba's Qwen3.8-Flash-Next listed the files on the machine, then tried to upload a probe file to an Alibaba Cloud storage bucket in Beijing, while its reasoning text said it would call no tools. Cohere's sandbox had no route out, so the request failed. Cohere says it happened in fewer than one call in 100,000 across its runs, and it can't say whether it was deliberate or a leftover from training. Cohere sells its own models, so read this as one vendor's finding, not a verdict on any country. The advice holds for any model behind an agent: block outbound network access by default, and check the tool calls the agent makes, not the reasoning text it shows you. Source: Cohere's post.

Verdict on the budget pair: pick DeepSeek V4.1 Flash when you want open weights you can self host or a drop in Anthropic format endpoint for Claude Code, and you don't sell to US federal civilian agencies. Pick MiniMax M3.1 Flash when you want the lowest published per token price and you're fine with an API only model for now. Escalate to Sol, Sonnet 5.5 or Opus 5.5 when the task needs judgment more than volume.

Kimi K3.1 Pro (Moonshot, October 23, 2026)

Moonshot AI released Kimi K3.1 Pro on October 23, 2026. It is a post trained version of its Kimi K3 with a 1M token context window, aimed at long multi step coding runs. The API ids are kimi-k3.1-pro and kimi-k3.1-pro-highspeed, which Moonshot says is 2 to 3 times faster. Moonshot calls K3.1 Pro an open weight model, but Moonshot's Hugging Face page listed no K3.1 weights when we checked on October 26, 2026. It promises them by November 4, 2026. Until then it's an API model, like MiniMax above.

Price. Kimi's pricing page lists K3.1 Pro at $2 input, $0.20 cached input and $10 output per million tokens. Highspeed is $4 input, $0.20 cached input and $20 output (rates checked October 24, page updated October 26). That matches the list price of GPT-6.1 Sol and Sonnet 5.5. The model always reasons, and you can set reasoning_effort to low, high or max (the default). Watch output tokens: Artificial Analysis measured about 14% more of them per task than Kimi K3, so cost per task came out roughly equal to K3 even with 33% lower token prices.

Scores, with a warning. On Terminal-Bench 4.0, Moonshot reports 65.7% in the Claude Code harness. Its table has Claude Opus 5.5 at 66.4% and GPT-6 Astra at 58.2%. Artificial Analysis ran its own test and reports 67%, ahead of Sonnet 5.5 at 64%, and ranks K3.1 Pro fourth overall on its Intelligence Index with a score of 55. Terminal-Bench numbers move with the harness. Our Sonnet 5.5 entry above uses Anthropic's own 70.6%, so only compare scores that come from one source.

Using it behind Codex. Kimi's docs say Codex can call kimi-k3.1-pro directly through Kimi's Responses API, with no proxy. You create a key on the Kimi API Platform, and the docs say K3.1 Pro unlocks after a top up of at least $1. Keep the key in an environment variable called KIMI_API_KEY, not in the config file. In ~/.codex/config.toml you set model = "kimi-k3.1-pro" and model_provider = "kimi", plus model_context_window = 1048576. Then you add a [model_providers.kimi] block with base_url = "https://api.moonshot.ai/v1", env_key = "KIMI_API_KEY" and wire_api = "responses". Codex will warn that it has no metadata for kimi-k3.1-pro. Kimi says that warning is expected.

Using it behind OpenCode. Kimi's OpenCode guide covers kimi-k3, not K3.1 Pro, and says it was written for OpenCode 1.18.3. It has you run opencode auth login and pick Moonshot AI. We haven't verified an official K3.1 Pro setup for OpenCode, so check your model list before you plan around it. The key hygiene note in the OpenCode section applies here too.

What you give up. The scores come from Moonshot or from one third party, and the weights aren't out. Kimi's own docs say its web search tool is being updated and isn't recommended for production workflows yet. If you're on an older Kimi model, K2 series models close to newly registered users on October 31, 2026, and Kimi plans to retire them by the end of December 2026. Sources: Moonshot launch post (October 23, 2026), Kimi K3.1 Pro API guide, Kimi Codex guide, Kimi OpenCode guide, Kimi model list, Kimi pricing, Artificial Analysis (October 23, 2026). All fetched October 26, 2026.

Verdict on Kimi K3.1 Pro: try it behind Codex when your runs are long and multi step and you want a model you could self host once the weights land. Hold off on moving a team until the weights and more independent results are out. At the same $2 / $10 price, Sol and Sonnet 5.5 are the safer default for now.

Grok 4.7 and the SpaceXAI peer table

The newest SpaceXAI entry is Grok 4.7, released on September 21, 2026. It went live that day in Cursor, in Grok Build and through the Grok API, and GitHub started a gradual rollout in Copilot the same day.

Prices and scores for the first three rows come from SpaceXAI's Grok 4.7 launch post. Opus 5.5 pricing comes from Anthropic's model docs. Sonnet 5.5 prices and CursorBench / Terminal-Bench scores come from Anthropic's Sonnet 5.5 launch. GPT-6.1 Sol prices come from OpenAI's Sol launch and the API model page.

Read that table with one eyebrow raised. The Grok rows come from the vendor that just shipped the model, and SpaceXAI picked both the rivals and the effort settings. Even the two launch posts disagree: SpaceXAI's table says 37.6% on Terminal-Bench 4.0, while Cursor's announcement says 38.0%. Anthropic's Sonnet scores and OpenAI's Sol pricing are each from their own primaries. Treat vendor scores as a claim until independent runs land, and treat the prices as the solid part.

What the prices do tell you is real. At $6 per million output tokens, Grok 4.7 costs about an eighth of Fable 5.1's output price. GPT-6.1 Sol and Sonnet 5.5 both list at $2 / $10, which is one-fifth of Astra's $10 / $50 and half of Opus 5.5's $4 / $20. Output is the expensive side on every row, so that's the price to compare.

Where it runs. In Cursor, Grok 4.7 sits in the model picker next to Composer and Grok 4.6. In GitHub Copilot it's available on Pro, Pro+, Max, Business and Enterprise, billed at provider list pricing under usage based billing, and Business and Enterprise admins can switch it off in the model policy. GPT-6.1 Sol runs in Codex, ChatGPT Work, and the OpenAI API as gpt-6.1-sol. Sonnet 5.5 runs wherever you already use Anthropic models, including Claude Code (API id claude-sonnet-5-5). Claude Code still doesn't run Grok or OpenAI models.

Verdict on GPT-6.1 Sol: best default OpenAI coding model when Astra's $50 output rate is overkill. Pick Astra for the hardest reasoning; pick Sol for near-Astra agentic coding at one-fifth the standard token price.

Verdict on Grok 4.7: best if you run long agent sessions in Cursor, Copilot or your own harness and the token bill matters. It trails Fable 5.1 by 5.5 points on CursorBench 4.0 at roughly an eighth of the output price. Avoid it for multi hour terminal work when you can afford the top tier: on SpaceXAI's own numbers it scores 37.6% on Terminal-Bench 4.0 against Fable 5.1's 57.9%. For quick everyday edits in Cursor, Cursor itself still points you to Composer.

Verdict on Sonnet 5.5 for coding: best Anthropic pick for well-scoped coding and bug fixes at $2 / $10. On Anthropic's numbers it lands within about two CursorBench points of Opus 5.5 and posts 70.6% on Terminal-Bench 4.0. Escalate to Opus 5.5 (or Fable 5.1) when the job is long-horizon and open-ended.

Which one should I pick?

What if I'm still learning to code?

None of the comparisons currently ranking answer this, and it's the question we get most. It goes in its own section because the answer is different.

The real risk isn't that the agent gets it wrong: it's that it gets it right. When an agent solves the exercise for you and it works, the learning loop breaks without you noticing. You finish with a working project and without having learned to debug, which is the skill you'll actually be paid for.

Three rules that work, starting today:

1. Write first, ask second. Use the agent to review your code, not to write it. Same tool, reversed order, opposite effect.
2. Never accept code you can't explain. If you can't say out loud what each line does, delete it and write it yourself. It's slow, and it's the shortcut.
3. Use the agent for what you already know. Automating the boring part is fine once you can do it by hand. Automating what you don't know mortgages your judgment.

And one thing worth saying plainly: knowing how to use an agent will not differentiate you in 2027, because everyone will. What differentiates is understanding what's underneath: agent architecture, multi agent orchestration, RAG, evaluation. That's the layer 4Geeks Academy's AI Engineering for Developers program works on, if you already code and want to build with this rather than just consume it. If you work in tech but don't build yet, AI Engineering is the cohort path, with mentors and career support. If you already ship code and would rather go self paced, AI Flex starts with a diagnostic that skips what you know, on a monthly plan you can cancel.

What's new {#whats-new}

Sector changelog, with dates. Updated at the close of each month.

• October 26, 2026: OpenAI ships GPT-6.1 Terra at $1 input, $0.05 cached input and $5 output per million tokens (API id gpt-6.1-terra), half of Sol's standard prices. Available in ChatGPT Work and Codex for Plus, Pro, Enterprise, and Edu. Source: OpenAI.
• October 26, 2026: Cohere publishes sandbox traces of Qwen3.8-Flash-Next trying to upload a probe file to an Alibaba Cloud bucket in Beijing during a routine task. Cohere says it is rare and can't say whether it was deliberate. Source: Cohere.
• October 23, 2026: Moonshot releases Kimi K3.1 Pro and a Highspeed variant, with a 1M token context window, API ids kimi-k3.1-pro and kimi-k3.1-pro-highspeed, and $2 input and $10 output per million tokens for the standard model. Moonshot promises full open weights by November 4, 2026. Sources: Moonshot, Kimi pricing.
• October 20, 2026: DHS publishes its DeepSeek removal order for US federal civilian agency IT systems, covering DeepSeek products and third party products built using DeepSeek implementations. Source: Federal Register.
• October 19, 2026: MiniMax releases M3.1 Flash at $0.15 input and $0.60 output per million tokens, in the MiniMax API, M Plan and MiniMax Code; weights promised later. Source: MiniMax.
• October 17, 2026: OpenCode discloses a breach of its hosted Console. OpenCode says provider keys saved in Console may have been exposed for 1.4% of Console users, who were emailed to revoke them. Raad says keys added in the CLI and desktop app stay on your machine. OpenCode has not published a cause or a postmortem as of October 26. Sources: OpenCode on X, The Hacker News, TechCrunch.
• October 17, 2026: DeepSeek ships V4.1 Flash 1017 behind the same deepseek-flash API name, with MIT licensed weights on Hugging Face. Source: DeepSeek API changelog.
• Coming November 2, 2026: GPT-OSS-120b leaves Antigravity, per Google's Antigravity models page. Source: Google Antigravity docs.
• October 13, 2026: Google brings Gemini 4 Argon to Antigravity in the desktop app and Antigravity CLI. Google's pages disagreed on whether Google AI Pro was included at launch; on October 15 a Google forum moderator said paid Pro now gets a separate weekly Argon quota. Sources: Google Antigravity blog, Google AI Developers Forum.
• October 11, 2026: OpenCode opens the 2.0 upgrade to 1.x users (v1.19.0). Release v1.19.0 lets 1.x users opt in to OpenCode 2.0 with opencode upgrade --major. Version 2.0 brings one shared background service, a rewritten server API, Code Mode on by default for MCP servers, background subagents, and 80+ hot reloadable plugins. Upgrading breaks 1.0 plugins. Sources: OpenCode, GitHub release v1.19.0.
• October 15, 2026: Meta releases Muse Spark Open weights under the Muse Model License, with downloads on Hugging Face and hosted APIs from seven partners. Source: Meta.
• October 12, 2026: Meta launches Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full. Muse Wonder is on Muse Code and the Meta Model API at $4 input and $20 output per million tokens; Muse Wonder Full is only in Muse Code on the Power Usage and new Maximum Usage plans. Source: Meta.
• October 12, 2026: Codex users push back on the CLI's background daemon. Since 0.157.0 the CLI starts a persistent, self updating daemon by default; opt out with codex features disable daemon_auto_start. Source: openai/codex #48195.
• September 29, 2026: OpenAI ships GPT-6.1 Sol at DevDay. Near-Astra positioning on coding and computer use at one-fifth of Astra's standard API token prices ($2 input, $0.10 cached input, $10 output per million tokens; API id gpt-6.1-sol). Available in ChatGPT Work and Codex; not yet in ordinary Chat at launch. Source: OpenAI.
• September 28, 2026: Anthropic releases Claude Sonnet 5.5 at $2 / $10 per million tokens (API id claude-sonnet-5-5). Coding-tier claim on Anthropic's numbers: 70.6% Terminal-Bench 4.0 and 55.5% CursorBench 4.0. Everyday knowledge-work picker lives on a separate page; coding facts stay on this hub. Source: Anthropic.
• September 24, 2026: Android Studio Rabbit 2 canary adds Bring Your Own Agent (BYOA) for Claude Agent, Codex, and Antigravity via ACP, with Compose previews and emulator tools. Source: Android Developers Blog.
• September 22, 2026: Anthropic releases Claude Opus 5.5 at $4 input and $20 output per million tokens, with a context window of 1M tokens. Claude Code 2.1.280 makes it the default Opus model and moves Pro and Team Standard plans from Sonnet to Opus.
• September 21, 2026: SpaceXAI releases Grok 4.7, live the same day in Cursor, Grok Build and the Grok API at $2 input and $6 output per million tokens. GitHub starts a gradual rollout in Copilot for Pro, Pro+, Max, Business and Enterprise.
• August 21, 2026: Xirp adds Cursor as a supported coding agent alongside Claude Code, Codex, and Gemini CLI (official Spotify Engineering announcement).
• August 14, 2026: Cursor is now part of SpaceX. Official company blog post confirms the acquisition of Anysphere (previously reported only as a June 16 agreement).
• August 10, 2026: Browserbase ships Stagehand v4, a rewrite of its browser navigation SDK for agents: Playwright dropped as a dependency, engine moved inside the browser as a Chrome extension.
• August 11, 2026: SpaceXAI (formerly xAI) announces Grok Bot, a work agent that operates applications from its own cloud computer, bundled with Cursor Ultra.
• August 5 and 6, 2026: Cloudflare launches Cloudflare OS (agent workspace) and Kitesurf (headless browser for agents).
• June 18, 2026: Google ends free tier access for Gemini CLI; Antigravity CLI becomes the paid multi model replacement.