9router vs freellmapi
Self-hosted gateway pointing any AI coding CLI (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Cline) at 40+ providers, with subscription→cheap→free auto-fallback and tool_result compression for 20-40% token savings. — versus — OpenAI-compatible proxy that stacks free tiers of 18 LLM providers (~1.7B tokens/mo) behind one /v1 — smart routing, failover, per-key quota tracking; Claude Code and Codex shims included.
Both are self-hosted OpenAI-compatible gateways that multiplex providers with automatic fallback for coding CLIs. 9router optimizes paid usage (subscription→cheap→free routing, token compression); FreeLLMAPI exists purely to stack and stay under 18 providers' free-tier caps.
| 9router | freellmapi | |
|---|---|---|
| Stars | 22k | 16k |
| Forks | 3.8k | 2.4k |
| Language | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Last activity | 7 days ago | 2 days ago |
| Topics | gateway, coding | gateway |
| Curated connections | 5 | 3 |
9router — the curator's take
The 'never hit a rate limit again' gateway: run it on localhost, point Claude Code / Codex / Cursor / Cline / Copilot at its OpenAI-compatible endpoint, and it round-robins your accounts and cascades Subscription → cheap ($0.2-0.6/1M) → free (Kiro, OpenCode) providers so a job never dies mid-flight, while RTK compresses tool_result payloads (git diff, grep, ls) to shave 20-40% of tokens. Best when you juggle several provider subscriptions/keys and keep exhausting quota. NOT for you if you want one stable premium model (free-tier fallbacks vary in quality/availability), if routing traffic through third-party free providers raises data-privacy concerns, or if you want savings from smarter code retrieval rather than payload compression. Overlaps heavily with lynkr — pick 9router for free/multi-account fallback breadth, lynkr for tool-stripping, semantic caching and local-model routing.
freellmapi — the curator's take
Use it for personal experimentation when you want real working inference for $0: free tiers stacked across Google/Groq/Cerebras/Mistral/etc., a Thompson-sampling router with 20-attempt failover, and Anthropic Messages + Responses API shims so Claude Code and Codex CLI run straight against the free pool. Also does embeddings, images, TTS, and an MCP server agents can query for live model availability. NOT for production or teams — single-user by design, no billing, and several provider free tiers are ToS-gray (NVIDIA's is eval-only; the repo itself says personal experimentation only). Freemium catch: new models reach free installs 30 days late unless you pay $19/yr for the live catalog.