Like everyone here I kept hitting usage limits, so I built a way out and open sourced it. FreeLLMAPI is a self hosted router (MIT) that aggregates the official free API tiers of 18 LLM providers (161 models, roughly 1.7B tokens per month combined) and speaks the Anthropic Messages format. Claude Code treats it as a backend: export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=http://localhost:3001/ export ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN=your-unified-key You choose which model serves each Claude family (default/opus/sonnet/haiku) from a dashboard, and the router tracks per key rate limits and health, failing over to the next provider with quota when one runs dry. To be clear, this does not touch your Anthropic account or subscription in any way. Traffic goes only to the providers you add your own keys for, and the endpoint is just wire-format compatible. Disclosure for sub rules: I am the author of this repo. The router is completely free and MIT licensed, self-hosted, using your own free provider keys stored encrypted on your machine. Honest tradeoffs: these are free tier models, not Anthropic’s, so quality depends on your mapping (big model on default, fast one on haiku has worked best for me), and free tiers mean rate limits; the router smooths that over rather than making it disappear. Repo: https://github.com/tashfeenahmed/freellmapi (one Docker container or a desktop app) What I would love feedback on: which model mappings hold up for real coding sessions, and what the router should optimise for now that it records time to first token per request. submitted by /u/Agreeable_Craft_8943
Originally posted by u/Agreeable_Craft_8943 on r/ClaudeCode