OmniRoute setup: connect Claude Code to free model tiers

This tutorial walks through OmniRoute, an open source gateway that connects coding tools to multiple model providers through one endpoint. The gateway runs on the user's computer, but the models may run through third-party services. This setup does not establish offline inference or that Claude's model weights run on the laptop.

The presenter installs OmniRoute, connects providers, imports model lists and tests which entries respond. In his tests, Antigravity returns responses from 11 of 13 models, while OpenCode's provider list returns two of seven. He also connects NVIDIA NIM with an API key and imports free models through OpenRouter. These results describe access at recording time, rather than guaranteed availability.

The Claude Code setup uses an OmniRoute API key, the gateway's base URL and exact model names in settings.json. The presenter demonstrates DeepSeek and Opus 4.6 responses inside the coding assistant. He then configures Combos with priority fallback or round-robin routing across providers.

The speaker warns about quotas, provider restrictions and trust when linking accounts. Free access can stop working, and readable source code does not establish safety. The closing examples show a game he says he built with the free setup and a separate health tracker deployed through the optional sponsored Hostinger connector. Hosting prices are not established here; deployment is separate from free-tier model access.