Developers Find Ways to Use Claude Code Without Anthropic Models

Boris Cherney, the head of Anthropic’s coding tool Claude Code, last month found himself in the middle of an online spat that highlighted how some developers are finding workarounds to using Claude Code with cheaper non-Anthropic models, including those of rival OpenAI, to save costs.

Developer Alex Getman used a proxy made up of lines of code to connect Claude Code to OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol. Fifteen minutes after Getman typed the first coding requests into Claude, Anthropic shut down the account, he said. 

Claude Code is popular because it comes with all the tools assembled to read and run files, search codebases and run tasks in parallel. But it doesn’t need to run on Anthropic models. And developers are saving money by using cheaper models with the Claude Code harness. For that reason, Getman’s posts about the ban drew a million views within hours.