Ollama + Claude Code = 99% CHEAPER
My FREE AI OS Course: https://www.skool.com/ai-automation-society/about?el=free-claude-code&hcategory=youtube-videos&utm_campaign=free-group Full courses + unlimited support: https://www.skool.com/ai-automation-society-plus/about?el=free-claude-code&hcategory=youtube-videos&utm_campaign=ais-plus Apply for my YT podcast: https://podcast.nateherk.com/apply Work with me: https://uppitai.com/ My Tools💻 FREE MONTH voice to text: https://get.glaido.com/nate Code NATEHERK for 10% off VPS (annual plan): https://www.hostinger.com/vps/claude-code-hosting In this video I walk you through two different ways to run Claude Code completely free. The first method uses Ollama to run open source models locally on your own machine, and the second uses Open Router to access free models in the cloud. I cover everything from downloading and configuring models to the tradeoffs between local and cloud, and when you'd actually want to use open source models over something like Opus. "ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL": "https://openrouter.ai/api", "ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN": "YOUR OPEN ROUTER API KEY", "ANTHROPIC_API_KEY": "", "ANTHROPIC_MODEL": "openrouter/free", "ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_SONNET_MODEL": "openrouter/free", "ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_OPUS_MODEL": "openrouter/free", "ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_HAIKU_MODEL": "openrouter/free", "ANTHROPIC_SMALL_FAST_MODEL": "openrouter/free", "CLAUDE_CODE_SUBAGENT_MODEL": "openrouter/free" Sponsorship Inquiries: 📧 nate@smoothmedia.co Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nateherkelman/ https://x.com/nateherk https://www.instagram.com/nateherk/ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 1:39 Open Source vs Closed Source Models 5:05 Method 1: Local Models with Ollama 8:45 Launching Claude Code with Ollama 16:16 When to Use Open Source Models 17:20 Method 2: Open Router 23:00 Open Source Limitations 24:55 Final Thoughts