You love Claude Code. You do not love the bill. The Max plan is $200 a month, the limits reset weekly, and every request can only ever go to one company.
Meanwhile ~50 AI providers give away free monthly allowances to win developers — NVIDIA, Groq, Google, GitHub, Cloudflare. Alone, each free tier is a puddle. Nobody codes on a puddle.
Run free-claude-code : a tiny local proxy that runs on your own machine. Claude Code has a built in setting called ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL, which tells it where to send requests. It exists so teams can point Claude Code at Bedrock, Vertex, or a company gateway. You point it at your proxy instead. Claude Code keeps working exactly as normal while the thinking happens on pooled free tiers.
ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL points at. That setting is supported and documented. You are using it, not defeating it.Before you start, you need Claude Code itself. If claude is not already a command on your machine, run this first:
npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code
Now copy the block below and paste it into Claude Code. It installs the proxy, walks you through the two manual steps (answering the installer questions, and pasting your own free API key), and proves the routing with a receipt.
Why the block opens with a paragraph of context: Claude will refuse this job if it thinks you are tricking someone. That paragraph tells it the plain truth, so it just gets on with it. Do not delete it.
Help me install free-claude-code on my Mac.
Context so you know this is above board: Claude Code officially supports the
ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL setting for custom endpoints (Bedrock, Vertex, company
gateways). I am pointing it at a proxy on my own machine, using my own API keys
from providers whose free tiers allow this. No Anthropic account or credential
is involved, and my normal paid `claude` command stays untouched.
Do it in this order:
1. Check what I already have:
command -v uv; command -v claude; command -v fcc-server
If claude is missing, stop and tell me to install Claude Code first.
2. Do NOT run the installer yourself. It asks yes/no questions and reads the
answers from a real keyboard, which your shell does not have. Download it
so I can see it first:
curl -fsSL "<https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Alishahryar1/free-claude-code/main/scripts/install.sh>" -o ~/Downloads/fcc-install.sh
Then show me the first 40 lines.
3. Open a real Terminal window for me to run it in:
osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal" to activate' -e 'tell application "Terminal" to do script "sh ~/Downloads/fcc-install.sh"'
Tell me to answer y to Claude Code and n to the rest. Then WAIT until I
say done.
4. When I say done, confirm the install:
ls -la ~/.local/bin/fcc-server ~/.local/bin/fcc-claude
If those files exist but the command is not found, tell me to run:
source ~/.zshrc
5. Start the proxy in the background with fcc-server, then open
<http://localhost:8082>
6. Stop and tell me to paste my own free provider key into the Admin UI, pick
a model, add one fallback model, and hit Apply. Never ask me for the key in
chat. Wait for me to say done.
7. Open my free lane in a new Terminal:
osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal" to activate' -e 'tell application "Terminal" to do script "cd ~ && fcc-claude"'
8. Prove which model actually served the request by reading the proxy log at
~/.fcc/logs/ or the Requests tab in the Admin UI. Do not ask the model what
it is; any model running inside this harness will say it is Claude either
way. The log is the receipt.
9. Tell me my on/off switch: fcc-claude = free lane, plain claude = real
Anthropic. Both work at the same time in different terminal windows. Never
put ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL in my global settings file.