How to Get Unlimited Free AI Coding in Your Terminal & VS Code (No Subscription Required) with OpenCode, Ollama, and DeepSeek

How to Get Unlimited Free AI Coding in Your Terminal & VS Code (No Subscription Required) with OpenCode, Ollama, and DeepSeek.

If you have been using the open-source OpenCode AI coding agent in your terminal or VS Code, you have probably run into this frustrating error:

Error: Free usage limit reached. Free models work in OpenCode; subscribe to OpenCode Go to keep going.

While OpenCode itself is 100% free and open-source, its complimentary cloud-hosted models carry strict daily caps. Luckily, you don't need a paid subscription to bypass this. By pairing OpenCode with Ollama and running DeepSeek locally on your machine, you can unlock completely free, unlimited agentic coding.

Here is a step-by-step guide to setting it up in your terminal and IDE.

Ollama allows you to run powerful large language models locally on your hardware.

Open your terminal and run the installation command for your operating system:

curl -fsSL https://ollama.com | bash Windows: Download the installer directly from ollama.com. Verify it's working by opening a new terminal window and typing: ollama --version Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode Step 2: Download the DeepSeek Coding Model DeepSeek offers exceptional code-generation models that rival massive commercial alternatives. We will download a coding-specific variant.

In your terminal, run the following command to download and start the model:

ollama run deepseek-coder:7b Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode 💡 Hardware Tip: If your machine lacks a dedicated graphics card (GPU) or has less than 16GB of RAM, download the lighter, faster version instead:

ollama run deepseek-coder:1.3b Keep this terminal window open while Ollama finishes downloading the model weights. Once it displays a >>> prompt, your local model server is officially running at http://localhost:11434.

Now we just need to redirect OpenCode away from its rate-limited cloud servers and point it toward your machine.

When launching a new OpenCode agent session in your workspace, simply pass the local model flag targeting your Ollama instance:

opencode --model ollama/deepseek-coder:7b Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode (Swap 7b for 1.3b if you downloaded the smaller version).

If you want to make this your permanent default so you don't have to type the flag every time, run:

opencode config Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode Follow the interactive prompt to switch your primary AI provider to Local/Ollama and specify your model.

If you prefer coding inside your IDE layout, configure the extension settings directly:

That’s it! Your AI coding agent is now completely self-hosted. OpenCode will orchestrate your files, execute terminal commands, and debug your application using DeepSeek's intelligence all powered entirely by your local machine. No limits, no subscriptions, and complete privacy for your code.

Tags: opencode deepseek ollama abdulsalamamtech agent coding