You're deep in a project and Claude says you've hit your limit. Usually that means waiting hours. This free, open-source switchboard, past 85,000 GitHub stars, sits between Claude Code and 380 AI providers. When one runs out or goes down, it moves the next request to one with room left, on its own. About 150 of those providers have free tiers, and it shrinks what gets sent so every token goes further. It all runs on your own computer.
Here's what it does, how to set it up, and the honest catch.
What it does for you
- One address for everything: Claude Code (and Codex, Cursor, Cline and 30+ other tools) talks to one local address, and the switchboard picks the provider.
- Automatic fallback in four steps: the plan you already pay for, then your paid API keys, then cheap models, then free ones.
- Model 'auto': it scores your connected providers live and sticks with the last one that worked. 'auto/cheap' goes cheapest first; 'auto/subscription' never goes past the plan you already pay for.
- Token shrinking: a stack of compression engines trims tool output and context by 15-95%, and never touches code blocks, links or JSON.
- A dashboard that shows which providers are connected, what's left of each free tier and where every request went.
Free, for your email
Get the full setup steps + the copy-paste setup prompt
The rest of this guide (3 more sections, 1 copy-paste prompt) opens right here. The setup prompt, one paste into Claude that sets it all up, comes by email only. Use your real address.
Unlocks: Setup (about 10 minutes) · The catch · Sources
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