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by jasonriddle 71 days ago
Slightly off topic, but question for folks.

I'm hoping to replace coding with Claude Sonnet 4.5 with a model with an open source or open weights model. Are any of the models on Ollama.com cloud offering (https://ollama.com/search?c=cloud) or any of the models on OpenRouter.ai a close replacement? I know that no model right now matches the full performance and capabilities of Claude Sonnet 4.5, but I want to know how close I can get and with which model(s).

If there is a model you say can replace it, talk about how long you have been using it for, and using what harness (Claude code, opencode, etc), and some strengths and weakness you have noticed. I'm not interested in what benchmarks say, I want to hear about real world use from programmers using these models.
2 comments
dimgl 70 days ago
In short: no.

Nothing comes close, in my opinion. Sonnet and Opus are still the best models. The Codex variants of the GPT models are also great. I've tried MiniMax, GLM, Qwen and Kimi and for anything even remotely complex these models seriously struggle.

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jasonriddle 70 days ago
Thank you for the honest answer.

Yes, this is the conclusion I've come to as well. I don't want to continue supporting OpenAI nor Anthropic, but the other models don't seem to be anywhere close yet, despite the hype.

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scottcha 71 days ago
Yes GLM5 and KimiK2.5 are pretty close replacements for sonnet.
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MrScruff 70 days ago
Haven't really tried GLM5 much but I've used 4.7 quite a bit and it was pretty far from competing with Sonnet at the time, although I saw claims online to the contrary.
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jasonriddle 70 days ago
What coding harness are you using? What are some example workflows you have used either for? Have you used them only for new/simple projects or for more complicated refactoring or architecture design?
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scottcha 70 days ago
I use OpenCode and have just started using Nanoclaw with ClaudeCode (my coworker has a post coming on this) and sometimes ClaudeCode with Claude Code Router. I do a range of small to complex work with these but I also do drop back in to Claude Opus for some really complex things where I want it to be more autonomous.
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