Ollama + Claude Code = 99% CHEAPER

From the creator

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

Choose to Build with AI
Matched to Ollama

AI Maker Residence 3

The third AI workshop taught by our legendary teacher, Nick Sarafa. This is a full-day hands-on training workshop for purposeful co-creation with AI using Claude Code. Imagine having access to hundreds of billions of dollars of computing power and knowing exactly how to make it work for you through the power of super intelligence.

◆ Fri 09 Oct 2026 ◆ KOKO Cafe, London ◆ With Nick Sarafa
AI Maker Residence 3
Live event
AI Maker Residence 3
Fri 09 Oct 2026

More like this

Running one yourself?

List your AI event,
wherever it is.

A meetup, a workshop, a hackathon, a conference. Any city, or online. Tell us about it and it lands in front of people already learning this stuff.