Claude Code is one of the best agentic coding tools available right now. It's also not cheap. If you're running it seriously, the Anthropic API bill adds up fast. A new open source project called free-claude-code changes that math entirely.
The project is a lightweight proxy that routes Claude Code's Anthropic API calls to NVIDIA NIM at 40 requests per minute for free, with OpenRouter, DeepSeek, LM Studio, and other backends also supported. You get a working Claude Code setup, no subscription, no token billing.
I cover this space daily, and the technical approach here is genuinely clever. It's not a fork of Claude Code, not a jailbreak, and not a wrapper. It's a translation layer that sits between the client and the provider.
How the Proxy Works
Claude Code normally communicates with Anthropic's API. This intermediary proxy forwards those requests to different providers, with NVIDIA NIM standing out as the main option, offering 40 free requests per minute.
The proxy intercepts five categories of trivial requests, including quota probes, title generation, prefix detection, suggestions, and filepath extraction, and responds to them instantly without consuming API quota. Real requests are translated from Anthropic format to the provider's OpenAI-compatible format and streamed back.
Thinking tokens are also handled: <think> tags and reasoning_content fields are converted into native Claude thinking blocks, so Claude Code renders them correctly in the UI.
You don't need to modify Claude Code in any way, no patches, no forks. Just set two environment variables and you're done.
What Is NVIDIA NIM
NVIDIA NIM (NVIDIA Inference Microservices) is a platform that gives developers free, OpenAI-compatible API access to over 100 AI models, including Nemotron, Kimi-K2.5, MiniMax-M2.5, and GLM-5, hosted on DGX Cloud at build.nvidia.com.
Developers get 1,000 free inference credits on signup with a rate limit of 40 requests per minute, enough for meaningful prototyping before committing to self-hosted deployment. For a solo developer running Claude Code on a single project, 40 RPM covers almost everything short of large parallel agent runs.
Because NIM endpoints are OpenAI-compatible, you use the standard OpenAI API format — you just change the base URL and API key. The free-claude-code proxy handles that translation automatically so Claude Code never knows the difference.
Key Technical Highlights
The project supports ten provider backends: NVIDIA NIM, Kimi, Wafer, OpenRouter, DeepSeek, LM Studio, llama.cpp, Ollama, OpenCode Zen, and Z.ai.
Other notable capabilities:
