best-open-coding-models-2025

Purpose

Deep-dive analysis of the best open-source models for coding tasks, including benchmark comparisons, model architectures, and practical recommendations for local deployment.

Executive Summary

Top Open-Source Coding Models (December 2025):

Benchmark Landscape

Key Benchmarks Explained

Important: HumanEval and MBPP are now considered “solved” - top models exceed 90%. SWE-bench and LiveCodeBench are the real differentiators.

Detailed Model Analysis

Tier 1: State-of-the-Art Open Source

1. Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B (July 2025)

Architecture: 480B total, 35B active per token (MoE)

Key Specs:

• Context: 256K native, 1M with extrapolation
• Training: 7.5T tokens (70% code)
• License: Apache 2.0

Benchmark Performance:

• SWE-Bench Verified: State-of-the-art among open-source
• Comparable to Claude Sonnet 4 on agentic coding
• Best on: Agentic Coding, Browser-Use, Tool-Use

Agentic Features:

• Trained with long-horizon RL (Agent RL)
• 20,000 independent environments in parallel training
• Comes with Qwen Code CLI tool

Memory Requirements: ~250GB at Q4 quantization

2. DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp (Reasoner/Chat)

Architecture: 671B total, 37B active (MoE)

Benchmark Performance:

• Aider Polyglot: 74.2% (Reasoner) / 70.2% (Chat)
• LiveCodeBench: 34.38% (significant improvement from V2.5’s 29.2%)
• Trained on 14.8T tokens

Key Advantage: Best open-source model on Aider leaderboard (coding+reasoning hybrid)

Memory Requirements: ~350GB at Q4 quantization

3. DeepSeek R1

Architecture: Reasoning-focused variant

Benchmark Performance:

• Aider Polyglot: 71.4%
• Strong mathematical reasoning integration with code

Best For: Complex problems requiring multi-step reasoning + code generation

4. Kimi K2 Thinking (Moonshot AI)

Architecture: 1T total, 32B active (MoE)

Benchmark Performance:

• LiveCodeBench v6: 83.1% (among top open-source)
• SWE-Bench Verified: 65.8%
• MultiPL-E (HumanEval multilingual): 85.7% (near GPT-4.1’s 86.7%)
• HumanEval pass@1: 80-90%

Agentic Features:

• Executes 200-300 sequential tool calls autonomously
• Best for: coding assistants and AI agent tasks

Memory Requirements: ~500GB at Q4 (needs 512GB Mac Studio)

Tier 2: Highly Capable Open Models

5. Qwen2.5-Coder-32B-Instruct

Architecture: 32B dense

Benchmark Performance:

• EvalPlus: Highest open-source performance
• Outperforms models with >20B params (CodeStral-22B, DS-Coder-33B)
• Aider Polyglot: 16%
• HumanEval/MBPP: Near-saturated (very high scores)

Best For: Pure code tasks, structured task completion, HumanEval/MBPP/Spider

Memory Requirements: ~20GB at Q4 (easily runs on 256GB Mac)

6. Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B

Architecture: 30B total, 3.3B active (MoE)

Key Advantage: Blazing fast due to only 3.3B active params

Specs:

• Context: 256K native
• Fits on 32-64GB machines (quantized)

Best For: Fast interactive coding, daily development work

Memory Requirements: ~18GB at Q4

7. Codestral 25.01 (Mistral AI)

Architecture: 88B parameters

Benchmark Performance:

• Aider Polyglot: 11%
• Copilot Arena: Joint #1 with Claude 3.5 Sonnet and DeepSeek V2.5
• Strong LiveCodeBench and SQL (Spider) scores

Key Features:

• 256K context window
• 80+ programming languages
• 2x faster than base Codestral
• Best for: FIM (fill-in-middle), code completion, IDE integration

Note: Not fully open weights (commercial license)

Tier 3: Solid Performers

8. Llama 3.3 70B

Architecture: 70B dense

Benchmark Performance:

• Good general-purpose coding
• Aider Polyglot: Lower than specialized models
• Tool Use (BFCL): 77.3%

Best For: Structured output, documentation, clean formatting

Limitations: Failed highest number of tasks in recent MBPP study

9. Mistral-3.2-24B

Architecture: 24B dense

Performance: Lower than specialized coding models but efficient

Best For: Resource-constrained deployments needing coding ability

Comprehensive Benchmark Rankings

Aider Polyglot Leaderboard (December 2025)

Open-Source Models:

For context (proprietary):

• GPT-5 (high): 88.0%
• Gemini 2.5 Pro: 83.1%
• Claude Opus 4: 72.0%

LiveCodeBench (Top Open-Source)

SWE-Bench Verified (Open-Source)

Note: Open-source models under 40% were common until April 2025. Recent models have pushed this significantly higher.

EvalPlus (Code Generation)

Head-to-Head Comparisons

Qwen3-Coder vs Qwen2.5-Coder

Verdict: Qwen3-Coder for complex projects; Qwen2.5-Coder for daily coding

DeepSeek-V3 vs Qwen3-Coder

Verdict: DeepSeek for reasoning-heavy coding; Qwen3-Coder for agentic workflows

Codestral vs Qwen2.5-Coder

Verdict: Codestral for IDE/completion; Qwen2.5-Coder for accuracy and open-source

Recommendations by Use Case

For Your M3 Ultra (256GB)

Quick Install Commands

# Fast daily driver (recommended)
ollama run qwen3-coder:30b

# Best pure code model
ollama run qwen2.5-coder:32b

# DeepSeek for reasoning + code
ollama run deepseek-r1

# Maximum quality (if memory permits)
mlx_lm.generate --model mlx-community/Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B-Instruct-Q3

By Task Type

Industry Insight: “Team Effort” Approach

Based on 2025 benchmarks, the best strategy is using different models for different tasks:

1. Planning/architecture: DeepSeek R1 or Qwen3 (reasoning)
2. Code generation: Qwen3-Coder or Qwen2.5-Coder
3. Code completion/FIM: Codestral 25.01
4. Complex debugging: DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp (Reasoner)
5. Agentic workflows: Kimi K2 Thinking or Qwen3-Coder

Saturated vs Active Benchmarks

Saturated (Less Useful Now)

• HumanEval: >90% solved by top models
• MBPP: >90% solved by top models
• These no longer differentiate model quality

Active (Current Differentiators)

• SWE-Bench Verified: Real-world GitHub issues
• LiveCodeBench: Contamination-free, continuously updated
• Aider Polyglot: Multi-language instruction following
• EvalPlus: Rigorous code generation testing

Sources

1. Aider LLM Leaderboards
2. SWE-bench Leaderboards
3. LiveCodeBench
4. EvalPlus Leaderboard
5. LLM Benchmarks 2025 - LLM Stats
6. Qwen3-Coder: Agentic Coding - Qwen Blog
7. Best Open-Source LLMs (August 2025) - KeywordsAI
8. Top Benchmarks for Open-Source Coding LLMs - KeywordsAI
9. Codestral 25.01 vs Qwen2.5-Coder - Analytics Vidhya
10. Best LLM for Coding 2025 - Binary Verse AI
11. Comparing Top 7 LLMs for Coding 2025 - MarkTechPost
12. Ultimate 2025 Guide to Coding LLM Benchmarks - MarkTechPost