Ox Alpha
Ranked 26 of 72 language models by recommenders
Free model many find strong at coding, UI and design for its price. Critics say it is not frontier-level and its benchmark claims are overstated.
Free model many find strong at coding, UI and design for its price. Critics say it is not frontier-level and its benchmark claims are overstated.
50 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 36
- criticize it
- 14
- approval share
- 72%
Recommended in 2 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 36 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 2 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Strong at coding and design
“I'm getting some actual work done with it, I'm really enjoying working with it”
Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “Behaviorally fingerprinting Ox Alpha's provenance” “completed the task all the way while the other two failed on both metrics”
Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights” “It one-shotted generation of Java bindings for this project”
Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights” - Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights”
- Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “GLM-5.3-Flash”
- Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights”
- Comment from 28 Aug 2026 in “GLM-5.3 is now open-weight”
Cheap or free to use
“Omp + 0x alpha is free via openrouter and opencode go”
Comment from 24 Aug 2026 in “Anthropic's best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive” “so cheap and so comparatively good at design is crazy”
Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “GLM-5.3-Flash” “the best free model I can remember using”
Comment from 18 Sep 2026 in “Qwen 3.8 Omni Flash” - Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “Ox Alpha – A mysterious new AI model”
Finds bugs others missed
“It's actually been a useful model to identify flaws in the harness.”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “Ox-Alpha Is GLM?” “Ox Alpha found bugs that Fable and Opus missed”
Comment from 23 Aug 2026 in “Anthropic's best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive” Competes with frontier models
“Ox Alpha is looking to be a really really good model to the point that it competes with Fable/Sol”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “Ox-Alpha Is GLM?” “somewhere between Sonnet and Opus but not something you leave unattended”
Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights” “It felt like pre-castration Fable.”
Comment from 18 Sep 2026 in “Qwen 3.8 Omni Flash”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Loses track on complex tasks
“it starts stumbling and losing the plot on complex bash scripts with pipelines”
Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights” “can do a very good job but it doesn't necessarily recheck it's own reasoning”
Comment from 23 Aug 2026 in “Quick impressions: A week of using Codex more than Claude” “somewhere between Sonnet and Opus but not something you leave unattended”
Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights” - Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “Ask HN: What is one simple thing LLMs are insanely bad at?”
Hype and inflated benchmarks
“It's like someone registered this domain before and then used AI to create a landing page to ride the wave of popularity.”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “Ox Alpha – A mysterious new AI model” “The Ox-Alpha webpage really make it sound like they are trying to hype a model that has nothing particular to show”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “Ox-Alpha Is GLM?” “Like it reads just like the typical >>we are the best<<, where you of course don't want to believe the hype.”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “Ox Alpha – A mysterious new AI model” - Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights”
- Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “Ox Alpha – A mysterious new AI model”
Not frontier-level in quality
“It's not a good model tbh, got a bunch of things wrong that Opus corrected in my codebase.”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “Ox-Alpha Is GLM?” “It doesn’t rival deepseek v4 flash, and of course not deepseek v4 pro.”
Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights” “It is a capable small model, but it’s not frontier level.”
Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights” Network errors and timeouts
“the version accessible from OpenCode had a massive timeout problem the first day or so”
Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights” “I couldn't get past all the network errors on OpenCode. Seemed smart enough”
Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights”
Other language models people recommend
The four most recommended other language models, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus | 3,331 | 2,746 | 55% | 13 | 4 mo156 owners | — |
| OpenAI GPT | 1,205 | 987 | 55% | 13 | 6 mo47 owners | — |
| Claude Sonnet | 854 | 586 | 59% | 13 | 6 mo46 owners | — |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 828 | 223 | 79% | 8 | 1 mo24 owners | Approved |
| Ox AlphaThis page | 36 | 14 | 72% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 57 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It felt like pre-castration Fable.”
“the best free model I can remember using”
“Ox-Alpha was a strong coder”
“When it first launched on OpenRouter I was getting nearly 70 Tokens/second.”
“got an accurate answer from a third-party player with a little interface on what is claimed to be Ox Alpha”
“somewhere between Sonnet and Opus but not something you leave unattended”
“oxa's write up is far far better. It explains the situation very well, and has great structure for its write ups.”
“so cheap and so comparatively good at design is crazy”
“the coding feels good but still not way better for me to switch to it”
“I remember it performed really well for a model that had 'flash' in its name.”
“it actually did a fairly decent job when it wasn't getting network errors”
“it starts stumbling and losing the plot on complex bash scripts with pipelines”
“working non-stop on various projects with zero problems”
“Ox Alpha was working good for me”
“completed the task all the way while the other two failed on both metrics”
“the version accessible from OpenCode had a massive timeout problem the first day or so”
“I couldn't get past all the network errors on OpenCode. Seemed smart enough”
“Ox alpha is better at UI than GPT 5.6 Sol. Not a high bar considering Sol sucks at UI”
“It is a capable small model, but it’s not frontier level.”
“it does not really feel "smart", but the personality is super refreshing”
“It one-shotted generation of Java bindings for this project”
“It doesn’t rival deepseek v4 flash, and of course not deepseek v4 pro.”
“Releasing weights is the right move. Keeps them competitive with DeepSeek on the open side.”
“the outperform Fable was a mid (not completed) benchmark run. Real results were lower.”
“Its done a fantastic work and its almost finished now.”
“I'm getting some actual work done with it, I'm really enjoying working with it”
“it's not something it can do without supervision”
“it's the best cheap ( free ) model atm”
“It's like someone registered this domain before and then used AI to create a landing page to ride the wave of popularity.”
“It is good, but not as good as this page suggests.”
“Like it reads just like the typical >>we are the best<<, where you of course don't want to believe the hype.”
“It's actually been a useful model to identify flaws in the harness.”
“The Ox-Alpha webpage really make it sound like they are trying to hype a model that has nothing particular to show”
“It's not a good model tbh, got a bunch of things wrong that Opus corrected in my codebase.”
“Ox Alpha is looking to be a really really good model to the point that it competes with Fable/Sol”
“Omp + 0x alpha is free via openrouter and opencode go”
“check that it compiles back to byte-perfect original”
“can do a very good job but it doesn't necessarily recheck it's own reasoning”
“Ox Alpha found bugs that Fable and Opus missed”
“has been crushing benchmarks and appears to be the next release in the GLM family”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.