Replit Names OpenAI Its Preferred Partner, Making ChatGPT the Default Over Anthropic's Claude

Replit has made OpenAI its preferred partner for Replit Agent, with ChatGPT now the default model. CEO Amjad Masad cited cost, partnership and performance onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt on Thursday, Oct. 15. Customers can still choose Claude models, and a person familiar with the Anthropic partnership told TechCrunch it is still in place.

Replit no longer counts Anthropic as its preferred partner for AI models. CEO and co-founder Amjad Masad announced the change on Thursday, Oct. 15, while onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt, and said cost was one of several reasons.

OpenAI's ChatGPT is now the default model for Replit Agent, though customers can still pick Anthropic's Claude models. Because most customers stick with the default rather than choosing a model themselves, TechCrunch reported, the shift could significantly reduce Replit's spending with Anthropic. Masad said onstage that Replit had been, until recently, one of Anthropic's top five customers.

"I think ChatGPT is better now," Masad said. He pointed to an internal benchmark Replit uses and a public one it publishes, where he said Sol and Astra "perform better on building vibe-coded applications from scratch."

"It was a decision based on both cost, partnership, and performance. And for all these reasons, we just felt like they were a better partner for now," he said.

Shift Follows Earlier Collaboration

Replit had kept working with both companies. Its October 2 changelog added new models from each: GPT-6.1 Sol in Max Mode and Claude Sonnet 5.5 in Power Mode. Replit announced its OpenAI partnership in August, but nothing public had suggested the Anthropic relationship was ending.

"Replit remains model agnostic," Masad told TechCrunch afterward, calling OpenAI "our preferred partner for powering Replit Agent, based on performance, economics, and the strength of our partnership." He repeated the point on X on Saturday, Oct. 17, writing, "What I meant at TC Disrupt is that OpenAI is now our preferred partner powering Agent based on performance, cost, and strength of our partnership." In a reply, he added that "OpenAI models are generally more affordable."

People familiar with the Anthropic-Replit partnership rejected Masad's onstage comments, according to TechCrunch. One of them, who asked not to be named, said the partnership was still in place.

Replit sells a cloud-based software development platform where users build and deploy apps from inside a browser. At Disrupt on Thursday, Masad also described Replit as a "self-driving company," with agents doing much of the routine work while people supply judgment. "You need human judgment; you need taste," he said.

Claude is still on the menu. A day after Masad's remarks, Replit's October 16 changelog said builders on Core and Pro plans can now choose Claude Haiku 5.5 from the model selector in Power Mode, and Replit's AI Integrations documentation still lists Anthropic's Claude models.