What is OpenCode Zen?
OpenCode Zen is a pay-as-you-go gateway to a curated set of models that the OpenCode team has tested and benchmarked specifically for coding agents. You load a balance (around $20 to start), pay per request with no markup, and the balance tops itself up automatically when it runs low. Models are US-hosted with a zero-retention policy, and it works with any coding agent — not just OpenCode.
The pitch is purity: at-cost tokens, no subscription, no lock-in, only the models worth using.
What is DevPass?
DevPass by LLM Gateway is a flat-rate coding plan. You pay a fixed monthly price and get a usage allowance across 200+ models — every major provider, from Claude Opus 4.7 and GPT-5.5 to Gemini 3.1 Pro and the open-weight coders. Every request's exact cost shows up in a real-time dashboard, but the number on your invoice doesn't move.
Flat rate vs pay-as-you-go
This is the whole decision in one line: do you want a predictable bill or a metered one?
- OpenCode Zen bills per token. Light months are cheap; heavy months cost more. You never overpay for idle capacity, but you also can't know the bill in advance.
- DevPass bills a flat rate. You know the number on day one. A runaway agent loop can't run up a surprise invoice — when you hit your allowance, requests pause until the cycle resets or you upgrade.
For hobby use or spiky workloads, metered billing can win. For daily work, team budgets, or anyone who's been burned by a metered LLM bill, the flat rate is the safer default.
Model coverage and savings
Zen's curated catalog is a feature — fewer, vetted models — but it's also a ceiling. DevPass deliberately goes the other way: 200+ models on every plan, so the frontier model a task needs is always one switch away, no new key required. Pair DevPass with SoulForge, the graph-powered agent that treats your code as structure rather than strings, and you cut roughly half your tokens — effectively doubling what your flat rate buys.
Who should choose which
Choose OpenCode Zen if you want at-cost, zero-markup token pricing on a vetted model set and you're comfortable with a variable bill.
Choose DevPass if you want a fixed monthly price, the full 200+ model catalog including the frontier models, protection from bill shock, and the option to halve your token spend with SoulForge.