Testing NVIDIA's Free Nemotron 3 Ultra as a Coding Agent in OpenCode
Aj_Networks · reddit · 2026-10-08
The author tested NVIDIA's free hosted Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B MoE, 55B active, 1M context) as a coding agent model in OpenCode to see if it can replace paid API credits.
- Capability: Built a couple of terminal projects; fast and surprisingly solid for free, but accuracy is hit-or-miss next to Claude, especially on tool calls.
- Undocumented limits: The free tier allows roughly 10–20 requests/min, so agent loops hit 429s mid-task.
- Privacy: NVIDIA logs free-tier usage — fine for side projects, keep work code away.
- OpenCode still shows an "estimated cost" even though the free tier charges nothing.
The author open-sourced a setup script that stores the API key in an env var instead of plaintext config, with pre-launch checks, tested on Windows 11 and macOS.
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