Best for

Developers and teams who want a self-hosted, open-weight coding model for agentic workflows without ongoing per-token API costs.

Use cases

Development Agents & autom.

Overview

Laguna XS.2 is the first public open-weight model from Poolside AI, a company that has been quietly building coding-specific foundation models since 2023. Released on April 28, 2026, it uses a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture — 33 billion total parameters but only 3 billion active at inference time. That efficiency means you can run it locally on a single GPU with 36GB VRAM or even a MacBook Pro with 36GB unified memory, which is remarkable for a model at this benchmark level.

The headline number is 68.2% on SWE-bench Verified, which places Laguna XS.2 in the same ballpark as models several times its size. Poolside achieved this by training exclusively on code-related data — not general web text — and designing the architecture specifically for agentic workflows where the model needs to plan, edit files, run tests, and iterate across multi-step coding tasks. This isn't a general-purpose LLM that happens to code; it's a coding model through and through.

The weights are released under Apache 2.0 with no usage restrictions, and there's free API access through both Poolside's own endpoint and OpenRouter during a limited preview period. For teams that want to self-host a coding model without per-token API costs — or developers who want local inference for privacy reasons — Laguna XS.2 is immediately one of the strongest options available. The main caveat: it's narrowly focused on code, so don't expect strong performance on general knowledge or non-programming tasks.

Is Laguna XS.2 free?

Yes. Laguna XS.2 is free to use.

What the free tier covers: Fully open-weight under Apache 2.0. Free API access available during limited preview period.

Listed pricing: Free (Apache 2.0).

Pricing on this page has not been re-verified. The entry was last edited on 2026-05-02, and no separate pricing check has been run since. Treat the figures as a record of what was published then and confirm on the official site.

Laguna XS.2 pricing

Plan	Price	What's included
Open Weights	Free	Apache 2.0 license, download from Hugging Face, self-host anywhere
Poolside API	Free (limited time)	Hosted inference via Poolside's API during preview period
OpenRouter	Free (limited time)	Access via OpenRouter API with standard OpenAI-compatible endpoints

Open Weights Free

Apache 2.0 license, download from Hugging Face, self-host anywhere

Poolside API Free (limited time)

Hosted inference via Poolside's API during preview period

OpenRouter Free (limited time)

Access via OpenRouter API with standard OpenAI-compatible endpoints

Pricing on this page has not been re-verified. The entry was last edited on 2026-05-02, and no separate pricing check has been run since. Treat the figures as a record of what was published then and confirm on the official site.

Is Laguna XS.2 worth it?

Worth it for Developers and teams who want a self-hosted, open-weight coding model for agentic workflows without ongoing per-token API costs.

You can test that on the free tier before paying anything. The recorded trade-offs are listed below, and any one of them can settle the question on its own.

The 8.5/10 AI Score is an editorial read of published capability, price and shipping pace. Nobody here has hands-on hours with Laguna XS.2. How we verify.

Worth it if

The strengths recorded against this entry.

68.2% SWE-bench Verified — matches models 10x its active parameter count
Runs locally on a single consumer GPU or 36GB Mac — no cloud required
Apache 2.0 with no restrictions — fine-tune and deploy commercially
MoE architecture keeps inference fast and memory-efficient

Not worth it if

Any one of these blocks your use case.

Narrowly focused on code — weak on general knowledge and non-programming tasks
Brand new release with limited community tooling and integrations so far
Free API access is explicitly temporary — long-term hosted pricing unclear
Requires 36GB RAM minimum — won't run on budget laptops or smaller GPUs

What sets Laguna XS.2 apart

68.2% SWE-bench Verified while running with only 3B active parameters via MoE architecture
Runs locally on a single consumer GPU or a 36GB Mac, no cloud dependency required
Apache 2.0 license with no restrictions on commercial fine-tuning or deployment
Trained exclusively on code data and built for agentic harnesses like SWE-agent

Key features

Open Weights

Full model weights released under Apache 2.0. Download, fine-tune, and deploy commercially with zero restrictions. Available on Hugging Face.

Agentic Coding

Purpose-built for multi-step coding workflows — file editing, test execution, debugging loops, and long-horizon planning. Designed to work inside agentic harnesses like SWE-agent.

Local Inference

33B MoE with 3B active parameters means it runs on a single GPU (36GB VRAM) or Apple Silicon Mac with 36GB unified memory. No cloud dependency required.

How it compares

Tool	Best for	Pricing	Score
Laguna XS.2	Developers and teams who want a self-hosted, open-weight coding model for agentic workflows without ongoing per-token API costs.	Free (Apache 2.0)	8.5/10
Cursor vs Cursor →	Professional developers handling complex, multi-file refactors who want AI built into a familiar VS Code-based editor.	Free Hobby + Individual $20/mo + Teams $40/user/mo + Enterprise Custom	9.5/10
GPT-5.5 vs GPT-5.5 →	Developers and teams needing a frontier reasoning model for agentic coding workflows and large-codebase context handling.	API: $5/$30 per 1M tokens (in/out). ChatGPT Plus $20/mo, Pro $200/mo	9.4/10
Claude Code vs Claude Code →	Developers who want an agent that works inside an existing repo and toolchain rather than in a hosted editor, and who already pay for a Claude plan.	Included with Claude Pro $17/mo, Max 5x $100/mo, Max 20x $200/mo, Team and Enterprise plans	9.3/10