Free Claude Code

Free Claude Code (FCC) is an independent MIT proxy that lets Claude Code, Codex, Pi, OpenCode, or Cline talk to a local catalog of providers instead of only Anthropic. Rechecked 2026-08-19: Alishahryar1/free-claude-code showed 45,953 stars, created 2026-01-28, license MIT. The README's own disclaimer: not affiliated with Anthropic. Claude and Claude Code are Anthropic trademarks.

r/ClaudeAI was pushing the repo as "a local gateway so Claude Code can use 48 AI providers" with a 45,000-star claim. The GitHub count we saw is 45,953. That is the feed item.

Key Features

• 48 providers in one Admin UI: NVIDIA NIM, OpenRouter, Groq, DeepSeek, QwenCloud, Z.ai, OpenCode Zen/Go, local Ollama / LM Studio / llama.cpp, and the rest of the README table. Free-tier limits are each vendor's problem and change.
• Five launchers: fcc-claude, fcc-codex, fcc-pi, fcc-opencode, fcc-cline. They leave your existing agent settings in place.
• Failover: after retries, FCC tries the next configured model without restarting the turn.
• Optional RTK: the README claims up to 90% fewer terminal-output tokens if you install RTK. We did not measure that.
• Desktop tray plus fcc-server: Admin UI for keys, model dropdown, fallback list, reasoning override, Discord / Telegram, optional Whisper or NVIDIA NIM voice.

Use Cases

• Claude Code users who want a /model picker full of NIM / OpenRouter / local GGUF without rewriting the CLI.
• Teams that already pay Codex or OpenCode and want one proxy token story.
• People who will read provider ToS. FCC says it follows provider terms and removes integrations that stop being allowed. That is a claim, not a legal opinion.

Limitation: a gateway cannot mint free Opus. The "1.3B+ free tokens" line is a sum of provider free tiers. Those tiers shrink. Also, pointing Claude Code at a third-party base URL can still violate Anthropic's terms even when the README says "ToS friendly." Read both.

Pricing

FCC itself is $0 (MIT). You pay providers.

There is no FCC Pro plan on the README.

Getting Started

1. Install from the official scripts on the repo (macOS/Linux install.sh, Windows install.ps1).
2. Start Free Claude Code or fcc-server and open the Admin UI.
3. Paste at least one key (the README walkthrough starts with NVIDIA NIM) and Validate, then Apply.
4. Run fcc-claude or fcc-codex and pick an FCC model in the native picker.

First-party resource: the README and ARCHITECTURE.md.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this an official Anthropic product?

No. The README says so in the first screen.

Does it keep my Claude / Codex login?

Launchers are written to leave existing settings, sessions, and credentials alone. Recheck after an upgrade.

Can it use ChatGPT instead of an API key?

Yes, via Providers → Connected accounts for OpenAI / ChatGPT, per the README.

Alternatives

• Claude Code official: stay on Anthropic if you wanted support and a clean ToS.
• OpenCode: talk to providers without a Claude Code-shaped proxy.
• Cloudflare AI Gateway: hosted gateway, not a local Claude Code shim.

Tips

1. Set a fallback model list. Outages are why this repo exists.
2. Prefer tool-capable models. A 70B chat model with no tools will look broken inside Claude Code.
3. Match the Admin UI port and token if you wire VS Code or JetBrains. The README's default example is http://localhost:8082 with token freecc.

Conclusion

FCC is the Reddit-hot local shim: 46k stars, MIT, five coding agents, a long provider table. Install it if you already run Claude Code and accept that "free" means someone else's free tier. If you wanted Anthropic support, buy Claude Code and skip the proxy.