Never Hit a Claude Code Limit Again (Free OmniRoute Setup)
You hit your limit mid build and everything stops. OmniRoute fixes that. It is a free, open source gateway that sits between Claude Code and 350+ providers, and it hands your job to the next available model the moment one runs dry. Every step below is a prompt you paste straight into Claude Code. It does the setup for you.
What this actually does
OmniRoute is an MIT licensed gateway you run on your own machine. It starts a local endpoint on port 20128 and every AI tool you own can point at it.
On the other side of that endpoint are 350+ registered providers, and around 150 of them have a free tier. OmniRoute pools them. The documented free budget lands around 1.62 billion tokens a month, and first month signup credits can push it past 2 billion.
Now the part that matters for Claude Code. When your active provider runs out of quota, OmniRoute scores every other connected provider on health, remaining quota, speed and cost, then hands the job to the best one. Your context goes with it. You keep typing.
It also compresses what you send. Terminal output, git diffs, test runs and build logs get stripped of noise before they ever reach a model, which is where most of your tokens quietly go.
What you need first
Node 18 or newer, and about five minutes. That is genuinely it.
You do not need a credit card. Seven providers connect with no API key and no signup at all, and you can be routing traffic through those before you sign up for anything.
Everything below runs locally. Nothing gets uploaded, and your existing Claude setup stays exactly where it is until you decide to switch.
Step 1: Let Claude Code install it
Open Claude Code in any folder and paste this. It checks your Node version first, so it fails loudly instead of halfway.
Set up OmniRoute on my machine so Claude Code never stops when I hit a limit.
Go step by step and show me the output of each command before moving on:
1. Check my Node version. I need Node 18 or newer. If it is older, tell me how to upgrade and stop there.
2. Install the gateway globally: npm install -g omniroute
3. Start it by running: omniroute
4. Confirm it is alive by fetching http://localhost:20128 and tell me whether the dashboard loads.
5. Print the dashboard URL and the API endpoint, then stop and wait for me.
Do not touch any of my existing Claude Code settings yet. I want to connect my free providers first.Step 2: Connect the free providers
Start with the keyless ones. No signup, no card, nothing to paste. Those alone are enough to prove the whole thing works.
Then add the signup tiers, because that is where the real volume is. Cerebras gives 1M tokens a day. Groq gives you 30 requests a minute free. DeepSeek hands out 5M free tokens, Google AI Studio allows 1,500 requests a day, and NVIDIA NIM runs about 40 requests a minute.
Notice the last line of the prompt. Never paste an API key into a chat window when a dashboard field will do.
OmniRoute is running on http://localhost:20128.
Walk me through connecting the free providers, starting with the ones that need no signup at all.
1. Open the dashboard at http://localhost:20128 and go to Providers.
2. Tell me which keyless providers I can connect right now with no API key: Kiro AI, OpenCode Free, Pollinations, LongCat, Cloudflare AI, Qwen and Qoder.
3. For each one, tell me exactly which button to click.
4. Then give me a checklist of the signup free tiers worth adding, with the signup URL for each, sorted by how many free tokens I get.
5. After I paste each key into the dashboard, verify the provider shows as healthy.
Do not ask me for my API keys in chat. I will paste them into the dashboard myself.Step 3: Point Claude Code at the gateway
This is the step everyone gets wrong, so read the third line of the prompt carefully.
The base URL is the gateway root with no /v1 on the end. Claude Code appends that itself. Put /v1 there and you get a confusing 404 that looks like the gateway is down when it is fine.
The prompt also backs up your settings before it writes anything, and it keeps the free setup in a separate profile. That is what makes Step 6 a one command undo.
Now connect Claude Code to my local OmniRoute gateway.
1. Run: omniroute setup-claude
2. Show me every profile it wrote into ~/.claude/profiles/ and which model each one points at.
3. Tell me what ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL got set to. It must be the gateway root with NO /v1 on the end, because Claude Code appends that itself. Fix it if it is wrong.
4. Before changing anything else, back up my existing ~/.claude/settings.json to settings.json.backup and tell me where it is.
5. Show me the exact command to launch Claude Code on the free profile.
Do not overwrite my existing settings.json. Keep the free setup in its own profile so I can switch back in one command.Step 4: Turn on auto fallback
This is the feature you actually came for. Set your model to an auto combo and OmniRoute scores every provider you have connected, then routes to the best one. When that one dies, it moves to the next without asking you.
Use auto/coding rather than plain auto. It weights toward models that are good at code instead of balancing for general chat.
Set my OmniRoute routing to auto so it fails over the moment a provider runs dry.
1. Fetch http://localhost:20128/v1/models and show me which auto combos I actually have available. I am looking for auto, auto/coding, auto/fast, auto/cheap, auto/smart and auto/offline.
2. Set my default model to auto/coding, since I am using this for code.
3. Explain in one line what happens to my current context when the active provider hits its quota.
4. Write the profile to ~/.claude/profiles/free/settings.json with ANTHROPIC_MODEL set to that combo and CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_GATEWAY_MODEL_DISCOVERY set to 1.
5. Show me the finished file.
Use the real model IDs from my own /v1/models response. Do not guess model names from documentation.Step 5: Turn on compression
Free tokens run out faster than people expect, and the reason is almost never your prompts. It is tool output. Git diffs, test runners, build logs and stack traces.
OmniRoute has two engines. Caveman strips filler from your prompts with rules tuned for coding. RTK is the one that matters here, it recognises command output and cuts the ANSI codes, progress bars and noise before a model ever charges you for reading it.
RTK alone saves 60 to 90 percent on eligible output. Stacked with Caveman it averages around 89 percent. Boom.
Skip Ultra mode. It prunes heuristically and thins code blocks, which is exactly what you do not want touching your source.
Turn on OmniRoute compression so my free tokens last longer.
1. Show me the current settings from http://localhost:20128/api/settings/compression
2. Explain Lite, Standard, Aggressive, Ultra, RTK and Stacked in one line each.
3. Set the default mode to RTK, because most of my token burn is terminal output, git diffs and test runs.
4. Add an auto trigger so compression only kicks in above 20000 tokens, and show me the autoTriggerTokens value you used.
5. Confirm that code blocks, URLs, JSON and tool definitions are preserved, and that API keys get redacted before anything is stored.
Do not set Ultra. I want my code left alone.Step 6: Prove it works
Do not trust a green dot. Force a failure and watch it recover, because that is the only thing you actually care about.
This prompt disables your top provider on purpose, sends a request, and shows you who caught it.
Prove OmniRoute is really routing my Claude Code traffic instead of just sitting there.
1. Send one test completion through the gateway and show me the raw response, including which provider served it.
2. Open the dashboard analytics and tell me my total tokens used, top provider, top model and estimated cost.
3. Force a fallback. Temporarily disable my top provider, send another request, and show me which provider picked it up.
4. Re-enable the provider you disabled.
5. Tell me in one line whether my context survived the handoff.The prompt vault
Two more worth keeping. The first tells you where you stand before you start a long session, which saves you finding out at the worst possible moment.
Show me my remaining free quota across every connected OmniRoute provider, sorted by how much is left.
Flag any that are rate limited right now, tell me when each one resets, and tell me roughly how many hours of coding I have left before everything runs dry.Switching back
Keep this one. Free models are great until you need real reasoning on something that matters, and you want the exit to be boring.
Put Claude Code back on my real Anthropic account.
1. Unset ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL, ANTHROPIC_MODEL, ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN and any ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_OPUS_MODEL, ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_SONNET_MODEL or ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_HAIKU_MODEL variables, from my shell profile and from ~/.claude/settings.json.
2. If my current settings.json is broken, restore the settings.json.backup you made earlier.
3. Confirm claude doctor runs clean.
4. Leave the OmniRoute profile in place so I can switch back whenever I want.
Show me what you changed before you change it.What this is not
Free models are not Opus. For scaffolding, refactors, tests, boilerplate and the long grinding middle of a build, they are genuinely powerful. For architecture decisions and hard debugging, switch back.
And be deliberate about what you route. Your prompts go to whichever provider serves them, under that provider's terms, not Anthropic's. Read them before you point anything sensitive at a free tier, and keep client work on your paid account. This runs entirely on your own machine, which is the good part, but the traffic still leaves it.
OmniRoute is open source and you can read every line of it on GitHub. If you want the other ways to run good models for nothing, the free model stack covers them.
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Frequently asked questions
Yes. It is MIT licensed and open source on GitHub, and you run it on your own machine, so there is nothing to subscribe to. The tokens come from the free tiers of the providers you connect. Seven of those need no signup and no API key at all.
No. Every step in this guide is a prompt you paste into Claude Code and it runs the commands for you. If you can copy and paste, you can finish this in about five minutes.
No. OmniRoute does not touch your Anthropic account or your subscription. It points Claude Code at a gateway running on your own machine, which then talks to other providers using their own free tiers. Keep it in a separate profile, as the setup prompt does, and your normal Claude setup stays untouched.
Not for everything, and it would be dishonest to say otherwise. They are strong on refactors, tests, boilerplate and repetitive work. For architecture calls and genuinely hard bugs, use the switch back prompt in this guide and go back to your paid account.
Your prompts go to whichever provider serves the request, under that provider's terms. The gateway itself runs locally and OmniRoute redacts API keys, bearer tokens and passwords before anything is stored, but the request still leaves your machine. Read the terms of any free tier before routing client work or anything sensitive through it.