replacing Claude
Open Source Claude Alternatives
Anthropic's assistant, including its API — Claude pricing: Free tier; Pro $20/month; Team $25-$30/user/month; API metered per token. Below: 3 free,
self-hostable open source projects that cover the same ground, ranked by real GitHub adoption.
There are 3 open source Claude alternatives tracked on this registry, against Claude pricing of Free tier; Pro $20/month; Team $25-$30/user/month; API metered per token. The most-adopted is Ollama with 181,290 GitHub stars under MIT, written in Go. Together the set has 378,293 stars across 3 languages and 1 licence. All 3 are free to self-host with no licence fee, and 3 of 3 received a commit in the last 90 days. 3 head-to-head Claude comparisons are available.
Claude's free tier is rate-limited and its paid tiers are per-seat, so cost grows with headcount rather than usage. API pricing is metered per token with no spending ceiling by default, and the models are closed — no self-hosting, no local inference, and prompts leave your infrastructure.
Our top 3 Claude alternatives
Ollama is a command-line tool and local server that manages open-weight language models on the machine it runs on. It ships a CLI, a REST API on port 11434, and client libraries for Python and JavaScript, so the same model can be driven from a terminal, a script, or an existing agent framework. Model execution is handled by the llama.cpp backend, and the project distributes installers for macOS, Windows and Linux alongside an official `ollama/ollama` Docker image.
MIT · Go · Claude vs Ollama →
Open WebUI is a self-hosted, open-source AI interface that unifies access to local and cloud-based large language models. It runs entirely in a web browser and supports Ollama for local model hosting alongside any OpenAI-compatible API, including services like LMStudio, GroqCloud, Mistral, and OpenRouter. Built in Python, it functions as a drop-in replacement for proprietary AI platforms, giving users full control over their model infrastructure and data.
NOASSERTION · Python · Claude vs Open WebUI →
LibreChat is an open-source, self-hostable chat interface designed as an enhanced ChatGPT clone. It unifies access to multiple AI models—including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, DeepSeek, Mistral, AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, and others—within a single web application. Built in TypeScript, it supports real-time streaming, multi-model switching, and advanced agent workflows while providing features like message search, artifacts, code interpreter, and secure multi-user authentication.
MIT · TypeScript · Claude vs LibreChat →
last updated nightly · ranking method: github stars, live-tracked
Frequently asked questions
What is the best open source alternative to Claude?
Ollama is the most-starred open source alternative to Claude in this registry, with 181,290 GitHub stars. 3 alternatives are compared here in total.
Are there free alternatives to Claude?
Yes. Every project listed on this page is open source and free to self-host — there is no licence fee. Some projects also sell a managed hosted version, but the self-hosted path costs nothing.
What should I look at when replacing Claude?
Compare licence terms, community size (stars), primary language and release activity. A fast-moving project with a compatible licence and an active maintainer base matters more than raw star count when you are committing to a migration.