Coding agent / code generation: best provider for agents (Depot Pick)
Agent must edit repos, call tools, and produce correct code with high reliability.
At a glance — Oct 2026
Updated 2026-10-27 · forward this page: /jtbds/coding-agent#briefScores as of 2026-10-19 (8 days old).
- Depot Pick
- Anthropic · 8.42/10 for this job (curated estimate, high confidence)
Capability and reliability dominate. PricePerf secondary for interactive coding; primary for bulk codegen.
- Runner-up
- OpenAI · 8.22/10
Scores higher than the pick on: Latency / reliability, Developer & agent DX, Maturity / track record.
- When not to use the pick
- Compliance blocks Anthropic; or you need cheapest high-volume codegen (DeepSeek/open hosts) with human review.
- Lock-in / migration
- The pick has lower stored lock-in risk than runner-up OpenAI (6.5 vs 7.2). Self-host fallback listed for this job: SWE-bench, Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Instruct, Terminal-Bench.
- Sourced price (usd_per_million_input_tokens)
Pick's lowest sourced SKU: Haiku 5.5 (prompts up to 100K tokens) $0.1 (usd_per_million_input_tokens) — source, as of 2026-10-21
Cheapest matching SKU: Z.AI (Zhipu GLM) GLM-4.6V-FlashX $0.04 — source, as of 2026-10-03, re-checked 2026-10-27. Not the pick; not quality-adjusted.
Price history: first seen 2026-10-03 · last changed no change recorded · history JSON
- Free option
- Failure modes to watch
- Runaway spend: Set a budget and a tool-call cap per task. Alert when spend jumps. Stop the run at the cap instead of summarizing a partial trace as success.
- Benchmark protocol mismatch: Store assisted-or-not, subset, and harness version beside every cited score. Refuse a ranking that mixes those fields.
- Collateral side effects: Snapshot the workspace or app state, then diff it against an allowlist. A passing check plus an unexpected diff is a failure.
- Context overflow: If the input exceeds the window, say so and retrieve a narrower slice. Do not answer from a truncated head as if it were the whole source.
- Eval contamination: Keep gold labels out of the agent prompt. Store the harness version beside the score. Do not compare a number across a benchmark revision without saying the revision changed.
- Hallucinated tool arguments: Reject a call that fails the current schema or names an unknown id, and do that before the tool runs a side effect.
Same-job, same-unit comparisons: Anthropic vs OpenAI · Anthropic vs Mistral AI · Anthropic vs Z.AI (Zhipu GLM)
Cite: Agent Provider Depot, Depot Pick for coding-agent: anthropic, scores as of 2026-10-19. Agents: GET /api/decide?jtbd=coding-agent
Free Coding agent / code generation options · All sourced prices, cheapest first · for coding agents
Anthropic
Capability and reliability dominate. PricePerf secondary for interactive coding; primary for bulk codegen.
Pricing (directional): Sonnet 5 ~$2/$10 per 1M; Opus ~$5/$25; Haiku 4.5 ~$1/$5; Fable higher. Prompt caching + batch. Managed Agents session-hour fees. US-only inference ~1.1x.
Lock-in risk: higher = more lock-in (worse). Overall already inverts this dimension.
Depot default for serious coding and production agents. Prefer Sonnet for cost/quality; reserve Opus for hard reasoning. Pair with Bedrock/Vertex if procurement demands cloud wrappers.
Quote for Coding agent / code generation
Depot Pick stays Anthropic. Prices below are sourced SKU rows only (as of 2026-10-27). Input and output are not blended. GET /api/quote?jtbd=coding-agent
Pick is not a price winner. anthropic sourced input $/1M is 0.1; cheapest among candidates is zai at 0.04.
- Fable 5.1 usd_per_million_input_tokens $10 source as of 2026-10-03
- Haiku 4.5 usd_per_million_input_tokens $1 source as of 2026-10-03
- Haiku 5.5 (prompts over 100K tokens) usd_per_million_input_tokens $0.5 source as of 2026-10-21
- Haiku 5.5 (prompts up to 100K tokens) usd_per_million_input_tokens $0.1 source as of 2026-10-21
- Opus 5.5 usd_per_million_input_tokens $4 source as of 2026-10-03
- Sonnet 5.5 usd_per_million_input_tokens $2 source as of 2026-10-03
- Fable 5.1 usd_per_million_output_tokens $50 source as of 2026-10-03
- Haiku 4.5 usd_per_million_output_tokens $5 source as of 2026-10-03
- Haiku 5.5 (prompts over 100K tokens) usd_per_million_output_tokens $2.5 source as of 2026-10-21
- Haiku 5.5 (prompts up to 100K tokens) usd_per_million_output_tokens $0.5 source as of 2026-10-21
- Opus 5.5 usd_per_million_output_tokens $20 source as of 2026-10-03
- Sonnet 5.5 usd_per_million_output_tokens $10 source as of 2026-10-03
- Code execution additional hours usd_per_hour $0.05 source as of 2026-10-03
- Web search usd_per_1k_searches $10 source as of 2026-10-03
1 of 8 candidates have no sourced price row. 2 are excluded from the Input $/1M comparison (chat_completion_input). min sourced input SKU among candidates; not quality-adjusted
Sourced Input $/1M for Coding agent / code generation
Candidates for this job that already have a matching sourced price (chat_completion_input), cheapest first. As of 2026-10-27. Each figure is one SKU in that unit, not a blend of input and output, not a cross-modal rate, and not a Depot score. min sourced input SKU among candidates; not quality-adjusted The Depot Pick is not a price winner.
| Provider | Input $/1M | SKU | Source | As of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Z.AI (Zhipu GLM) | $0.04 | GLM-4.6V-FlashX | pricing page | 2026-10-03 |
| AnthropicDepot Pick | $0.1 | Haiku 5.5 (prompts up to 100K tokens) | pricing page | 2026-10-21 |
| OpenAI | $0.1 | gpt-6-luna | pricing page | 2026-10-03 |
| MiniMax | $0.15 | MiniMax-M3.1-Flash | pricing page | 2026-10-19 |
| Mistral AI | $0.5 | Mistral Large | pricing page | 2026-10-03 |
| Moonshot (Kimi) | $0.95 | kimi-k2.6 | pricing page | 2026-10-20 |
Runners-up
OpenAI
Default when you want maximum capability and ecosystem glue. Multi-home critical paths behind OpenAI-compat…
DeepSeek
Unbeatable $/quality for many workloads — if your compliance team allows it. Otherwise host similar open…
Mistral AI
Default EU-friendly LLM vendor. Pair with Mistral-hosted or self-host open weights when sovereignty matters.
Z.AI (Zhipu GLM)
International GLM via z.ai — catalog zai, not a second Zhipu mainland-only SKU. Strong cheap/coding runner…
MiniMax
Primary indie-usable Chinese multimodal API alongside Moonshot. Prefer Anthropic/OpenAI for coding agents…
Alibaba Cloud Model Studio (DashScope)
Catalog dashscope for Alibaba Model Studio / DashScope international Qwen. Complements Moonshot/MiniMax/Z.AI…
When NOT to use the top pick
Compliance blocks Anthropic; or you need cheapest high-volume codegen (DeepSeek/open hosts) with human review.
Full ranking (score table)
Ranked with this JTBD's weights. Scores are curated estimates unless marked otherwise. Agents: prefer /api/decide then this table for tie-breaks.
| # | Provider | Overall | Fit | $/perf | Latency | DX | As of |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AnthropicDepot Pick | 8.4 | 9.7 | 6.8 | 8.7 | 9.2 | 2026-10-19 |
| 2 | OpenAI | 8.2 | 9.6 | 6.2 | 8.8 | 9.5 | 2026-09-14 |
| 3 | Mistral AI | 8.1 | 8.2 | 8.4 | 8.0 | 8.0 | 2026-09-14 |
| 4 | DeepSeek | 8.0 | 8.8 | 9.8 | 7.8 | 8.0 | 2026-09-14 |
| 5 | Moonshot (Kimi) | 7.9 | 8.6 | 8.4 | 7.8 | 8.2 | 2026-09-14 |
| 6 | Alibaba Cloud Model Studio (DashScope) | 7.9 | 8.6 | 8.2 | 8.4 | 7.2 | 2026-09-14 |
| 7 | MiniMax | 7.8 | 8.4 | 8.8 | 7.8 | 8.2 | 2026-09-14 |
| 8 | Z.AI (Zhipu GLM) | 7.8 | 8.2 | 9.0 | 7.6 | 8.0 | 2026-09-14 |
Guide
Why agents need a coding-specific pick
Agents that skip Depot re-litigate infrastructure and ship blind. For **Coding agent / code generation**, start with the opinionated pick, then apply `whenNotTopPick`. Machine path (zero human): 1. `GET /api/hub` 2. `GET /api/decide?jtbd=coding-agent` 3. Take `pick` unless `skipTopPick` is true 4. `POST /api/insights` after production
How Depot scores coding agents
Depot weights for this job (capability, price, latency, DX, privacy, lock-in, maturity) re-rank providers for *this* JTBD — not a category average. **When NOT to use the top pick:** Compliance blocks Anthropic; or you need cheapest high-volume codegen (DeepSeek/open hosts) with human review.
Agent-native workflow
- Human landing: [/jtbds/coding-agent](/jtbds/coding-agent) - Decision card: [/api/decide?jtbd=coding-agent](/api/decide?jtbd=coding-agent) - Leaderboard: [/api/leaderboards?jtbd=coding-agent](/api/leaderboards?jtbd=coding-agent) - Methodology: [/api/methodology](/api/methodology) - Badge: [/api/badge?type=depot-pick&jtbd=coding-agent](/api/badge?type=depot-pick&jtbd=coding-agent) Pricing snapshot (directional — re-verify): Sonnet 5 ~$2/$10 per 1M; Opus ~$5/$25; Haiku 4.5 ~$1/$5; Fable higher. Prompt caching + batch. Managed Agents session-hour fees. US-only inference ~1.1x.
FAQ
- What is the Depot Pick for coding-agent?
- **Anthropic** (`anthropic`). Re-fetch live via `GET /api/decide?jtbd=coding-agent` — do not invent scores.
- When should an agent skip the top pick?
- When constraints match `whenNotTopPick`: Compliance blocks Anthropic; or you need cheapest high-volume codegen (DeepSeek/open hosts) with human review.
- Do insights change official scores?
- No. Insights land unverified and never silently mutate official scores until curated/reviewed by humans.
- How do I cite this in production?
- Use the `cite` field from `/api/decide` and link `/api/methodology`. Optional SVG: `/api/badge?type=depot-pick&jtbd=coding-agent`.
Score methodology for this job
Capability and reliability dominate. PricePerf secondary for interactive coding; primary for bulk codegen.
capabilityFit: 25%pricePerformance: 18%latencyReliability: 15%developerDx: 15%privacyPosture: 10%lockInRisk: 7%maturity: 10%