Run Claude Code on Ollama or DeepSeek — No Anthropic Bill Required
Claude Code's CLI is one of the most capable AI coding agents available, but its hard dependency on Anthropic's API makes it prohibitively expensive for many developers and teams. CCR breaks that lock-in, letting developers use the same agent interface with local models (free, private, offline) or cheaper cloud alternatives like DeepSeek — a pattern that could reshape how teams budget for AI-assisted development.
Claude Code is powerful but expensive, and it only speaks Anthropic's Messages API. Claude Code Router (CCR) solves this by running as a local proxy on port 3456 that translates Anthropic's request format into the OpenAI Chat Completions format that Ollama and DeepSeek natively support. Developers point Claude Code at CCR via the ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL environment variable, and CCR handles the protocol conversion transparently.
The setup supports multiple providers simultaneously. For local, offline-capable coding, Ollama models like llama3.1 or qwen2.5 run on the developer's machine. For heavier lifting, DeepSeek's cloud models (deepseek-chat and deepseek-reasoner) provide stronger reasoning at a fraction of Anthropic's pricing. CCR also supports advanced routing rules — sending background tasks to cheap local models and complex reasoning to cloud models — plus API key rotation and fallback chains.
CCR is a desktop application with a GUI for configuring providers, routing rules, and virtual model aliases. It auto-applies profiles to Claude Code's settings.json, and includes a Network Logs panel for debugging protocol conversion issues. The project is open-source and third-party, not affiliated with Anthropic.
CCR's protocol translation approach is elegant because it requires zero changes to Claude Code itself — the agent doesn't know it's talking to a different backend.
The ability to route background tasks to cheap local models while reserving cloud models for complex reasoning is a practical cost optimization that enterprise teams will find immediately useful.
Using local models with Claude Code trades capability for privacy and cost — developers working on proprietary codebases may prefer this even when cloud models are technically superior.
The fact that a third-party tool is needed to use Claude Code with non-Anthropic models highlights a deliberate platform lock-in strategy by Anthropic, similar to how early AWS services only worked with AWS backends.
DeepSeek's models, especially deepseek-reasoner, are emerging as a credible alternative for coding tasks at a fraction of the cost — this is a signal that the AI coding market is becoming multi-provider by necessity.
CCR's desktop GUI approach is unusual for a developer tool — most similar proxies are CLI-only — which suggests the project is targeting a broader audience beyond hardcore terminal users.