Crush
Charm's open-source, cross-platform terminal AI coding agent
Overview
Crush is Charm's open-source terminal coding agent, built in Go, running on macOS, Linux, Windows, Android and BSDs. It talks to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Groq, AWS Bedrock, Azure and OpenAI/Anthropic-compatible endpoints, with LSP-aware context and MCP server support.
Pricing
Pricing shown for reference only. These figures reflect RECATOOLS research as of 12 Jul 2026 and may be out of date or incomplete. This is not financial or purchasing advice — always confirm the current price on the provider’s official website before making any decision.
What you can produce with Crush
- Free, open-source, single Go binary
- Cross-platform: macOS, Linux, Windows, Android, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD
- LSP-aware code understanding
- MCP server support (stdio, HTTP, SSE)
- Multi-provider: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Groq, AWS Bedrock, Azure
- OpenAI/Anthropic-compatible endpoint support
ASEAN Perspective
Crush in Southeast Asia
ASEAN-region availability and pricing notes coming soon. Drop the editorial team a note via /contact/ if you can supply local context (Singapore/Malaysia/Indonesia/Thailand/Vietnam).
Crush carries Charm's design pedigree (Bubble Tea, Gum, Glow) into agentic coding, and it shows — reviewers consistently call it the best-looking TUI in the category. LSP integration means it reasons about actual function definitions and references rather than treating code as text, and MCP support over stdio, HTTP or SSE gives it a real integration story beyond shell access.
It handles small-to-medium tasks well; multiple reviewers note the planning loop starts to drift on large, multi-day refactors spanning fifty-plus files — know that ceiling before you lean on it for big work. It's fully open source (Go, BYOK), so you're paying only your model provider, not Charm. Worth knowing: Crush shares DNA and a messy history with OpenCode — Charm hired the original OpenCode author and later renamed that lineage to Crush after a public fork dispute — they're separate products today.
What people say
Crush is Charm's rebrand of what was originally the OpenCode project before a 2025 dispute split it into two separate tools — Charm's fork (this entry) and a community fork that kept the OpenCode name, now maintained by Anomaly. Reviewers who cover both are explicit that they're no longer the same codebase despite the shared ancestry, and buyers' guides published in 2026 still spend a paragraph untangling which is which.
On its own merits, Crush gets consistently strong marks for polish. A Hacker News discussion and multiple hobbyist write-ups (XDA Developers, Micah Walter's blog) describe switching from Claude Code to Crush specifically for the terminal experience — the TUI is as much the selling point as the agent behavior. Its single-binary distribution covers macOS, Linux, Windows, Android, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD, a wider platform net than most competitors bother with.
Functionally, LSP integration is the most-cited differentiator: Crush understands function definitions, types and references rather than pattern-matching text, which reviewers say shows up in more accurate refactoring suggestions and error diagnostics. MCP support (stdio, HTTP, SSE transports) extends that with external tool access. Provider coverage is broad — OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Groq, AWS Bedrock, Azure, plus any OpenAI/Anthropic-compatible endpoint — so it isn't locked to one vendor's pricing or uptime.
The recurring criticism is scale: a GitHub issue thread (#2264) and several reviews note response speed and planning coherence degrade on large, multi-day refactors touching many files, in a way first-party agents like Claude Code handle more gracefully. For day-to-day feature work and small-to-medium codebases, reviewers rate it on par with Claude Code or Gemini CLI; for sprawling legacy-codebase work, it's a rougher fit. Not everyone converts, either — in the same discussion threads, at least one longtime Aider user said they were sticking with Aider for similar coding tasks rather than switching, a reminder that "prettiest TUI" doesn't automatically win over people already happy with a plainer tool. As with OpenCode, Crush is free, open source and BYOK, so total cost is whatever your model provider charges.
Summary of public user & expert reviews, compiled by RECATOOLS.
About this listing
This entry was compiled from publicly available data including Crush's official website, press releases, documentation, and reputable third-party publications. RECATOOLS is not affiliated with Crush unless explicitly stated.
Third-party AI tools update their pricing, features, availability, and policies frequently. Information here may be outdated by the time you read this — we make reasonable efforts to keep listings current, but cannot guarantee absolute accuracy.
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