ccflare vs OpenLimits
ccflare is a popular open-source proxy. You deploy it on your own Cloudflare account and provide your own Anthropic keys. OpenLimits is a fully managed service that maintains the accounts and infrastructure on your behalf.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | ccflare | OpenLimits |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free (+ account costs) | €120/mo all-inclusive |
| Accounts | You create & manage | Fully managed pool |
| Setup time | 30-60 minutes | 30 seconds |
| OAuth token refresh | Manual/scripted | Automatic |
| Account rotation | Basic round-robin | Equal user bucketing + failover |
| 429/529 handling | Manual retry | Auto cooldown + failover |
| Streaming | Yes | Yes |
| Extended thinking | Yes | Yes |
| Analytics dashboard | No | Full dashboard |
| Token tracking | No | Per-request breakdown |
| Live request feed | No | Real-time SSE |
| OpenAI-compatible | No | Yes (/v1/chat/completions) |
| Sticky sessions | No | Stable user-account assignment |
| Open source | Yes | No |
| Hosting | Your Cloudflare | Managed VPS infrastructure |
The Real Cost of Self-Hosting
ccflare is free software, but running it isn't free. Here's what you actually need:
- Multiple Anthropic accounts: You need 3-5+ accounts to get meaningful rate limit relief. Each needs a Pro or Max subscription ($20-200/mo each).
- 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.
Realistic total cost: $100-600/mo in subscriptions alone, plus your time for setup and maintenance. For a team, multiply accordingly.
When to Choose ccflare
- You enjoy setting up and maintaining infrastructure
- You want full control and visibility into the code
- You already have multiple Anthropic accounts
- Budget is extremely tight and you value time less than money
- You're building a custom solution on top of the proxy
When to Choose OpenLimits
- You want to code, not manage infrastructure
- Your time is worth more than €120/month
- 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.appinANTHROPIC_BASE_URL - Set your OpenLimits API key as
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY - Cancel your individual Anthropic subscriptions
- Tear down your Cloudflare Worker
Everything else stays the same. Your tools won't notice the difference (except the lack of rate limits).