omniroute

OmniRoute

Overview

OmniRoute is a free, open-source AI gateway that sits between your coding tools and 226 AI providers. Point Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or any OpenAI-compatible tool at a single local endpoint, and OmniRoute handles the rest — routing, fallback, compression, and cost optimization. It hit 6,000 GitHub stars within four months of its February 2026 launch, which tracks with the problem it solves: developers are burning money and hitting rate limits because every AI tool wants its own provider setup.

The project is built by Diego Souza, a Brazilian developer who’s been active in the open-source AI tooling space. What started as a personal frustration with juggling multiple API keys and dead subscriptions became a full routing engine. The codebase is TypeScript, MIT-licensed, and ships with 14,965 tests. That test count matters — this isn’t a weekend hack, it’s infrastructure you’d trust in front of your daily workflow.

The pitch is direct: stop paying for AI subscriptions you don’t fully use. OmniRoute aggregates free tiers from 50+ providers (11 of which are genuinely free forever, no card needed) and reports roughly 1.9 billion free tokens per month. When a provider’s quota runs out, the system silently fails over to the next one. The token compression pipeline — built on RTK and Caveman engines — cuts 15-95% of tokens from eligible requests, averaging around 89% on tool-heavy coding sessions. That’s not a typo. If you’ve ever watched your Claude Code session burn through tokens on verbose git diffs and grep output, this is the fix.

Why it matters

The AI coding agent ecosystem exploded in 2025 and 2026. Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor, Cline, Gemini CLI, Kiro — there are now 16+ serious coding agents competing for developer mindshare. But they all share the same bottleneck: API costs and rate limits. A developer using Claude Code on Anthropic’s API pays per token. A developer using Codex pays OpenAI. When quotas hit, coding stops. There’s no standard middleware layer.

OmniRoute fills that gap. It’s not trying to be another AI model or another coding agent. It’s the plumbing — the load balancer and reverse proxy for AI inference. Think of it as nginx for LLM requests. The 15 routing strategies (priority, round-robin, cost-optimized, context-relay, and others) let you tune the behavior. Want to drain your Claude subscription before touching free providers? Set priority. Want the cheapest model that works? Use auto/cheap. Want the system to figure it out? Just set auto and let the 9-factor scoring engine pick.

The compression story is what makes this genuinely interesting, not just another API proxy. The stacked RTK + Caveman pipeline runs transparently — no client changes needed. RTK handles tool output compression (git diffs, grep results, test logs), while Caveman compresses prose. Combined, they average 89% savings on tool-heavy sessions. A 10,000-token request becomes roughly 1,080 tokens. That’s the difference between hitting your daily limit at 2 PM and coding all day.

Key Features

226 Provider Catalog. OmniRoute connects to more providers than any other open-source router — 226 total, with 50+ offering free tiers and 11 that are genuinely free forever (Qoder, Pollinations, LongCat, Cloudflare AI, Cerebras, and others). The provider catalog is machine-readable and actively maintained. You’re not locked into one ecosystem — the system translates between OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, and Responses API formats automatically.

15 Routing Strategies. The routing engine supports 15 distinct strategies, from simple priority chains to sophisticated 9-factor scoring. The auto mode scores candidates on health, quota remaining, cost, latency, success rate, freshness, and three other signals. The context-relay strategy hands off long-context conversations between models. The cost-optimized mode always picks the cheapest viable provider. You can also build custom combos — chains of providers that fail over in sequence.

RTK + Caveman Token Compression. This is the headline feature. The compression pipeline runs 9 composable engines in sequence: session deduplication, CCR archival, RTK tool-result filtering, headroom tabular compaction, Caveman prose compression, LLMLingua-2 semantic pruning, whitespace trimming, aggressive summarization, and ultra heuristic pruning. Code blocks, URLs, and structured data are always preserved byte-perfect. The stacked RTK → Caveman mode averages 78-95% savings on mixed prompts with tool logs.

Auto-Fallback with Three Resilience Layers. When a provider fails, three independent layers kick in: circuit breakers stop hammering failing providers, connection cooldowns skip rate-limited keys while other keys keep serving, and model lockouts quarantine just the quota-limited model without taking down the whole connection. The result is zero-downtime routing. Your coding session never stops because one provider had a bad day.

MCP and A2A Agent Protocols. OmniRoute ships a built-in MCP server with 87 tools across 30 scopes, accessible via stdio, HTTP, and SSE transports. It also implements Google’s A2A (Agent-to-Agent) protocol with 6 skills over JSON-RPC 2.0. This means an AI agent can autonomously control OmniRoute — managing routing, providers, combos, cache, and compression without human intervention.

Universal Tool Compatibility. One config change — point your tool at http://localhost:20128/v1 — and every major coding agent works. Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Cline, Copilot, Gemini CLI, Kiro, OpenCode, Kilo Code, Droid, and six others. The system handles API format translation transparently. No per-tool configuration beyond the base URL.

Local-First, Zero Telemetry. OmniRoute runs entirely on your hardware. API keys are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM. There’s no cloud component in the request path, no telemetry, no phone-home behavior. Your prompts go only to the providers you choose. The entire codebase is MIT-licensed and auditable.

Use Cases

• Solo developers hitting API limits — You’re using Claude Code daily and keep hitting Anthropic’s rate limits mid-session. OmniRoute auto-fails over to free providers like Qoder or Pollinations, keeping you coding without interruption.

• Cost-conscious teams — A small team wants to use AI coding agents but can’t justify $20-50/month per developer per provider. OmniRoute’s cost-optimized routing and free tier aggregation brings the effective cost close to zero for moderate usage.

• Developers in regions with restricted AI access — OmniRoute’s 3-level proxy with TLS fingerprint stealth (JA3/JA4) lets developers access AI providers from countries where certain services are blocked.

• Multi-tool workflows — You use Claude Code for complex refactoring, Codex for quick completions, and Cursor for navigation. Instead of three API keys and three billing dashboards, you have one endpoint and one dashboard.

• Long coding sessions with heavy tool output — Git diffs, test logs, and grep results eat tokens fast. The RTK compression engine specifically targets these patterns, saving 60-90% on tool-heavy payloads.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• The 226-provider catalog with 50+ free tiers is unmatched by any open-source alternative. LiteLLM and OpenRouter offer 20-100 providers; OmniRoute more than doubles that.
• Token compression is genuinely impressive. The 89% average savings on tool-heavy sessions translates to real money saved — or real free-tier tokens stretched further.
• The auto-fallback system with three resilience layers means your coding session genuinely never stops. This isn’t marketing — the circuit breaker, cooldown, and model lockout layers are independent.
• Runs everywhere: npm, Docker, Electron desktop app, Termux on Android, PWA, Raspberry Pi. The same codebase works on your phone and your server.

Cons:

• The 226-provider count is partly marketing. Many providers share the same underlying infrastructure or free pools. The honest, deduplicated number for free tokens is 1.9B/month, not the 8B naïve sum — but that’s still a lot.
• Compression modes above “Standard” can occasionally lose nuance in complex technical explanations. The Ultra and Aggressive modes are best reserved for tool output, not nuanced code review discussions.
• The project is four months old with 95 open issues. The API surface is large (226 providers, 15 routing strategies, 9 compression engines) and rough edges are inevitable at this stage.
• The configuration surface is deep. New users might be overwhelmed by combos, strategies, compression presets, and provider setup. The auto mode helps, but power users will spend time tuning.

Getting Started

# Install globally via npm (Node.js >= 22)
npm install -g omniroute

# Run the setup wizard
omniroute setup

# Start the gateway (default: localhost:20128)
omniroute

# Or run via Docker
docker run -p 20128:20128 diegosouzapw/omniroute

Point your coding agent at the local endpoint:

# For Claude Code
export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=http://localhost:20128/v1

# For OpenAI-compatible tools (Codex, Cursor, Cline, etc.)
export OPENAI_BASE_URL=http://localhost:20128/v1

# Use auto mode to let OmniRoute pick the best provider
# Set your model to "auto" in your tool's config

Open the dashboard at http://localhost:20128/dashboard to monitor providers, token usage, compression savings, and free-tier budgets in real time.

Alternatives

LiteLLM — The most established open-source LLM proxy, supporting 100+ providers with a Python-based architecture. LiteLLM has a larger community and more battle-tested deployments, but lacks OmniRoute’s token compression pipeline and runs as a heavier Python service. Choose LiteLLM if you need a proven production proxy and don’t care about compression.

OpenRouter — A hosted API gateway (not self-hosted) that routes to 100+ providers with a simple pay-per-token model. OpenRouter is easier to set up — no local server needed — but you’re routing through their infrastructure and paying their markup. Choose OpenRouter if you want zero setup and don’t mind the per-token fee.

Portkey — An AI gateway focused on enterprise observability and governance. Portkey offers better monitoring, logging, and team management features, but fewer providers (around 25) and no token compression. Choose Portkey if you’re a team that needs compliance and observability more than cost optimization.

Verdict

OmniRoute is the most complete free AI gateway I’ve seen for individual developers and small teams. The 226-provider catalog is impressive, but the real value is the compression pipeline — saving 89% on tool-heavy sessions means your free tokens actually last. The auto-fallback system works, the MCP/A2A integration is forward-looking, and the local-first architecture respects your privacy. It’s four months old with rough edges, and the configuration surface will intimidate newcomers. But if you’re a fullstack developer using Claude Code or Cursor daily and tired of hitting rate limits at 2 PM, install it, run auto mode, and stop thinking about API keys. The 6,000+ stars in four months suggest the community agrees this problem needed solving.