ccflare vs OpenLimits

Feature comparison

Operating a self-hosted pool

ccflare does not charge a software fee. You still provide the provider accounts and operate the deployment:

• Provider accounts: Pool capacity depends on the accounts and subscriptions you add.
• Account management: Creating accounts, subscribing to plans, handling billing, dealing with account suspensions.
• Token refresh: OAuth tokens expire. You need to refresh them regularly, either manually or with scripts you build and maintain.
• Monitoring: No built-in alerting. If an account hits limits or goes down, you won't know unless you build monitoring yourself.
• Updates: ccflare is actively developed. You need to track releases and redeploy to get bug fixes and improvements.

The total cost depends on the subscriptions in the pool and the time spent on deployment, refresh, monitoring, and updates.

When ccflare fits

• You enjoy setting up and maintaining infrastructure
• You want full control and visibility into the code
• You already have multiple Anthropic accounts
• You prefer account costs over a managed-service fee
• You're building a custom solution on top of the proxy

When OpenLimits fits

• You want to code, not manage infrastructure
• You prefer one service fee to separate account and infrastructure management
• You want analytics and usage tracking out of the box
• You need reliable failover without building it yourself
• You don't want to deal with account management and token refresh
• You want an OpenAI-compatible endpoint

Migration from ccflare

If you're currently running ccflare and want to switch:

• Sign up at openlimits.app
• Replace your ccflare URL with https://openlimits.app in ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL
• Set your OpenLimits API key as ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
• Verify requests and usage records through the new endpoint
• Retire the old accounts and Worker when you no longer need the rollback path

The compatible request shape stays the same. The client changes are the base URL and API key.