npm install -g free-coding-models
free-coding-models

💡 Why this tool?

There is a large catalog of free and free-limited coding models (25 providers / 271 live models, generated from sources.js). Which one is fastest right now? Which one is actually stable, versus just lucky on the last ping?

free-coding-models (FCM) answers that by pinging every model in parallel, showing live latency, and computing a live Stability Score (0-100) combining p95 latency, jitter, spike rate and uptime. Average latency alone is misleading: a model that randomly spikes to 6 seconds is not reliable.

Once you pick a model, FCM writes it directly into your coding tool's config and opens the tool, so you go from "which model?" to "coding" in under 10 seconds.

| Surface | What it is | Docs | |---|---|---| | 🎛️ TUI | The interactive terminal dashboard. The default: live ranking, pick + launch. | docs/tui.md | | 🌐 Web Dashboard | Browser control center, shareable filtered views, Docker-ready. | docs/web-dashboard.md | | 🔌 Agent Extensions | OpenCode & Pi plugins: hot-swap models mid-session. | Agent extensions | | 🔀 Smart Model Router | A local OpenAI-compatible daemon with auto-failover. | docs/router.md |

Other highlights: AI Speed Test benchmarks (real completions, AI Latency + TPS), Smart Recommend (3-question wizard), a Ctrl+P Command Palette, a persistent 24h probe cache shared by every surface, live quota from response headers, real-world telemetry scores, models.dev enrichment with drift detection, and a tier scale based on SWE-bench Verified (S+ ≥ 70% down to C). Details: docs/stability.md.

⚡ Quick Start

① Install (Node.js 18+, no native build, never needs sudo):

npm install -g free-coding-models
free-coding-models --help   # prints every flag

② Grab one free API key. One is enough to start; add more later with P inside the app:

• Groq → console.groq.com/keys
• Cerebras → cloud.cerebras.ai (lowest latency in the catalog)
• NVIDIA NIM → build.nvidia.com (biggest no-credit-card quota)

③ Launch & paste your key: free-coding-models. First run prompts for keys (Enter skips), models ping in parallel, rows light up green ✅.

④ Pick a model & launch your tool: ↑↓ navigate, Enter to write the model into your tool's config and launch it. Pre-target another tool from the CLI, or cycle live with Z:

free-coding-models --goose --tier S      # Goose, pre-filtered to S-tier only
free-coding-models --crush --origin groq # Crush, Groq models only
free-coding-models --fiable              # print the single most reliable model and exit

⑤ Go further:

• 🌐 Prefer a browser? free-coding-models web opens the Web Dashboard.
• 🔀 Want one endpoint that never dies? free-coding-models --daemon-bg starts the Smart Model Router.
• 🤖 Live inside an agent? Install the OpenCode plugin or the Pi extension.

🟢 Providers

25 active providers / 271 live models, sorted by live model count. Top 8:

| Provider | Models | Best tier | Env var | |----------|--------|-----------|---------| | onomeo | 33 | S+ | ONOMEO_API_KEY | | Alibaba DashScope | 29 | S+ | DASHSCOPE_API_KEY | | Pollinations AI | 21 | S+ | POLLINATIONS_API_KEY | | OpenRouter | 18 | S+ | OPENROUTER_API_KEY | | Kilo | 17 | S+ | KILO_API_KEY | | Ollama Cloud | 17 | S+ | OLLAMA_API_KEY | | NVIDIA NIM | 16 | S+ | NVIDIA_API_KEY | | OVHcloud AI | 15 | S+ | OVH_AI_ENDPOINTS_ACCESS_TOKEN |

🧾 What "free" means here: free is a property of the (provider, model) pair, never of the provider as a whole. A row is listed only when that exact model id costs $0 to call through that provider (permanent free tier, :free variant, or free plan), verified live at audit time. The same open-weights model can be free on one host and paid on another - paid siblings are deliberately excluded. Full breakdown and badge legend: docs/providers.md.

📖 Full table, free-tier limits, env vars, tier scale and provider notes: docs/providers.md (generated from sources.js by node scripts/generate-provider-table.mjs, so counts cannot drift). OpenCode Zen's free models are listed there too.

⚠️ Health probes consume provider quota: FCM auto-pauses a provider on 429, backs off exponentially per failing model, and shows a footer chip while a provider rests. Leave a key empty and anonymous liveness probes still work for most providers.

🎛️ The Terminal UI (TUI)

The TUI is the heart of FCM: a live, sortable table of every model with real latency, stability, verdict, and a one-key launch into your coding tool. Sorts are one letter (R rank, S SWE, V verdict, B stability...), filters are T (tier cycle), D (provider cycle), E (visibility cycle), and the essentials are:

| Key | Action | |-----|--------| | ↑↓ / Enter | Navigate / launch the selected model | | Z | Cycle target tool (OpenCode → OpenClaw → Crush → Goose → ...) | | F / Y | Favorite a model / toggle pinned favorites mode | | Ctrl+A / Ctrl+U | AI Speed Test on selected model / all visible models | | Q | Smart Recommend (3-question wizard, Top 3 picks) | | Ctrl+P | Command Palette (fuzzy search over every filter, sort and action) | | ; | Playground chat with the router | | Shift+P / Ctrl+Shift+P | Re-probe failed rows / probe all models (404/410) | | Space | Expand the selected row (provider, endpoint URL, full model ID) | | Shift+B | Toggle broken-model visibility | | G / P / I / N | Theme / Settings / Help / Reset view | | Ctrl+C | Exit |

Mouse support: click headers to sort, double-click a row to launch, right-click to favorite, scroll to navigate.

Languages

The TUI and Web Dashboard support English (default) and Simplified Chinese (zh-CN). Change Language in Settings; the preference is shared and saved in your local config.

📖 Full key table, mouse reference and workflows: docs/tui.md · Stability score and columns: docs/stability.md

🌐 The Web Dashboard

A real-time browser control center for the same catalog: full filter/sort parity with the TUI, per-row benchmarks, favorites, Smart Recommend, a Router Dashboard, token usage analytics, and shareable URL deep-links (?tier=S+&sort=verdict&origin=groq). Start it with free-coding-models web (port 3333) or free-coding-models --daemon (dashboard + router API on port 19280). Runs headless in Docker (ghcr.io/vava-nessa/free-coding-models).

📖 Modes, Docker, Compose and all env vars (FCM_HOST, FCM_PORT, FCM_WEB_PORT, FCM_ROUTER_TOKEN, FCM_ALLOWED_ORIGINS, FCM_DISCORD_*_WEBHOOK): docs/web-dashboard.md

🔀 The Smart Model Router

A local OpenAI-compatible daemon: point any coding tool at http://localhost:19280/v1 with model fcm (key fcm-local) and FCM routes every request to the best available model in your active set. Adaptive health probes, per-model circuit breakers, family-preserving failover, auto-heal of broken sets, and a Playground chat to try it without configuring a tool.

free-coding-models --daemon-bg      # start
free-coding-models --daemon-status  # inspect
free-coding-models --daemon-stop    # stop

📖 Full guide (probes, circuit breaker, failover, Playground, --sync-set, REST API): docs/router.md

🧪 Router v2 engine (built in)

The router daemon now runs the hardened v2 engine internally: content-validated failover (a 200 with empty or garbage output is a failure and fails over), quota-aware routing with Retry-After pauses, persisted circuit breakers with a DEGRADED warning state, per-request decision traces, an Anthropic /v1/messages endpoint, and "test via router" actions that exercise the real routing chain. Same command, same port, same endpoints - existing setups upgrade by updating the package.

Open the TUI with Shift+V (or the "Router v2" entry in the Web Dashboard) to see the live fallback chain, per-request attempt chains and run pinned-model tests (Ctrl+T). Docs: docs/router-v2.md.

📖 CLI Flags

Flags combine freely in any order. The most common:

| Flag | Effect | |------|--------| | --best / --premium | Top tiers only / elite preset (S filter + verdict sort) | | --tier <S\|A\|B\|C> | Filter by tier family | | --origin <provider> | Filter by provider (e.g. groq) | | --sort <column> + --asc / --desc | Start sorted by a column (rank, swe, verdict, stability, ...) | | --json | Skip the TUI, print results as JSON (great with jq) | | --fiable | Wait 10s, print the single most reliable model, exit | | --recommend | Open Smart Recommend on startup | | --hide-unconfigured / --show-unconfigured | Control keyless models visibility | | --ping-interval <ms> | Override the ping interval | | --reprobe / --probe-ttl <ms> / --show-broken | Probe cache control | | --check-drift | Diff sources.js vs models.dev, exit 1 on mismatch | | --config-dir <dir> | Custom config location | | --fix-permissions / --yes | Auto-fix config file permissions (chmod 600, NTFS ACLs via icacls on Windows) | | --web | Open the Web Dashboard instead of the TUI | | --daemon / --daemon-bg / --daemon-status / --daemon-stop | Smart Model Router lifecycle | | --sync-set [name] | Auto-populate a router set with the currently best models | | --no-telemetry | Disable anonymous telemetry for this run | | --help / -h | Full in-app help |

Tool launchers (21): --opencode (default), --openclaw, --crush, --goose, --aider, --kilo, --qwen, --openhands, --amp, --pi, --hermes, --continue, --cline, --xcode, --copilot, --forgecode, --zcode, --jcode, --caveman, plus OpenCode Desktop / WebUI variants.

📖 Canonical full flag reference (every flag, verified against the parser): docs/flags.md · Tool-to-config mapping: docs/integrations.md

🔌 Agent Extensions

• OpenCode plugin (fcm-opencode, beta): /fcm scans and ranks, /fcm 1 switches models, /fcm rescan forces a fresh scan. Install: packages/fcm-opencode/README.md
• Pi extension (fcm-pi, beta): silent by default, /fcm re-scans and lets you pick, /fcm-list shows a ranked table, error-triggered picker on 4xx/5xx. Install: packages/fcm-pi/README.md
• Shared core (fcm-agent-core): one scan/rank/cache engine for both adapters, with a cross-tool cache and daemon integration. API: packages/fcm-agent-core/README.md

📋 Contributing

Issues, PRs and new provider integrations are welcome. To add a provider, see the format in sources.js and re-run node scripts/generate-provider-table.mjs so docs/providers.md stays in sync. Latency numbers are real round-trip times from your machine.

→ Development guide · Config reference · Sync-set · Contributors

⚖️ Model Licensing

You own the generated output: the code and text these models produce is yours to use commercially under current provider terms. The licenses below govern the model weights, not your output: Apache 2.0 (Qwen, GPT-OSS, Devstral, Gemma), MIT / permissive (GLM Flash, MiniMax), Modified MIT (Kimi K2), Llama Community License (attribution required), DeepSeek and NVIDIA Nemotron licenses, and hosted-API terms (Gemini, Mistral, OpenRouter-hosted). Verify on the model's official page before making legal decisions; this is a summary, not legal advice.

📊 Telemetry

FCM collects anonymous usage telemetry (app version, tool mode, OS, terminal family, a random install ID). No personal information, API keys, prompts, source code, or file paths ever leave your machine. Disable with --no-telemetry or FREE_CODING_MODELS_TELEMETRY=0.

🛡️ Security & Trust

| Signal | Status | |--------|--------| | npm Provenance | ✅ Sigstore-signed | | SBOM | ✅ Attached to every GitHub Release | | Dependencies | ✅ Small, pure JavaScript (chalk for the TUI; socket.io + UI libs for the dashboard), no native builds | | Security Policy | ✅ SECURITY.md | | Dependabot + npm audit CI | ✅ Weekly updates, scan on every push | | License | ✅ MIT |

Keys live locally in ~/.free-coding-models.json (0600) and are only ever sent to the matching provider endpoint. FCM never requires sudo and never executes arbitrary remote code. To report a vulnerability, see SECURITY.md.

Star History

Contributors

Created and maintained by Vanessa Depraute (@vava-nessa), with contributions from @erwinh22, @whit3rabbit, @skylaweber, @PhucTruong-ctrl, @chindris-mihai-alexandru, @serajbaltu, @stgreenb, @MoriDanWork, @fan92rus, @Muhammad95959, @FaintFlower, @lehneres, @ia-S-on, @bangla24bdrang-lab and @Sy57em1.

→ Full credits and highlighted contributions: CONTRIBUTORS.md

📚 More docs

Providers · TUI · Web Dashboard · Router · Flags · Integrations · Stability & columns · Sync-set · Config · Development · Other free AI resources

License

MIT