About the news
At TechCrunch Disrupt, Replit CEO and co-founder Amjad Masad said the company had moved away from Anthropic as the primary partner for Replit Agent. He cited cost, partnership terms, and performance on internal and public benchmarks for building applications from scratch.
Key points from the reporting:
- OpenAI models are now the default for Replit Agent
- Customers can still choose Anthropic’s Claude models if they prefer
- Masad later clarified that Replit remains model-agnostic and that Anthropic models stay available on the platform
- He said Replit’s internal and public benchmarks showed OpenAI models performing better on the specific task of building “vibe-coded” applications from scratch
- Sources familiar with the relationship told TechCrunch that the Anthropic partnership remains in place, and recent Replit materials still listed Claude models as available
Why it matters
The distinction matters in practice. Most users stick with the default rather than manually selecting a model. A change in the default can therefore shift a large share of usage and spending even when alternative models remain accessible.
The episode highlights ongoing competition among major labs for the default position inside popular developer and agent platforms. Performance, cost, and partnership strength all play a role in these decisions.
