I tried a Claude Code rival that's local, open source, and completely free - how it went (www.zdnet.com)

A new article explores the integration of local, open-source AI tools—Goose, Ollama, and Qwen3-coder—to create a cost-free alternative to Claude Code for coding tasks. Goose, developed by Block, serves as an agent framework, while Qwen3-coder functions as a coding-centric large language model, optimized with around 30 billion parameters. This combined setup promises to empower developers to code without relying on cloud services, as everything operates locally on their machines. The article outlines the installation process and initial testing of these tools. While the local setup showed potential, the performance was mixed, with the system taking multiple attempts to complete a simple programming task successfully. Although the author found the turnaround speed comparable to cloud-based options, they're still assessing whether this local alternative can genuinely compete with premium services like Claude Code and OpenAI Codex. Further insights are expected in upcoming articles, where the author plans to tackle more complex projects using this local AI stack.