How to Use Claude Code for Free (Beginner Tutorial, 4 Real Apps)

Every prompt and every command from this video, in order, with screenshots: https://rakhulkarthick.substack.com/p/how-to-use-claude-code-for-free-beginner How to use Claude Code for free: 4 ways to run Claude Code without paying Anthropic, each one building a real app. 3 are completely free, and the fourth cost about 20 US cents for a whole sales dashboard. You keep the same Claude Code app, and the AI model behind it comes from Google, NVIDIA (through OpenRouter) or DeepSeek. I show you the 2 settings that make it work, what free really costs you, and exactly what broke on each route. What's in it: Route 1: Free Claude Code with Google's free Gemini key, a booking page like Calendly in 39 seconds Route 2: OpenRouter's free Nemotron 3 Ultra, a link page like Linktree in a minute and a half Route 3: OmniRoute, every free tier stacked, a task board like Trello in about 3 and a half minutes Route 4: DeepSeek, no extra app, a sales dashboard on about a million rows of real sales in 16 minutes Chapters: 00:00 How to use Claude Code without paying Anthropic 01:03 The AI model and the app 01:49 The two settings that swap the AI model 03:23 What free really costs you 04:22 What cheap costs you 05:19 Route 1: Free Claude Code and Gemini 10:00 Route 2: OpenRouter's free models 11:48 Route 3: OmniRoute, every free tier stacked 15:32 Route 4: DeepSeek, no extra app 18:56 So which one should you use? Links: Claude Code install: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/quickstart Free Claude Code (independent, open source): https://github.com/Alishahryar1/free-claude-code Google AI Studio: https://aistudio.google.com OpenRouter: https://openrouter.ai OmniRoute: https://github.com/cheaper-inference/OmniRoute Node.js: https://nodejs.org DeepSeek platform: https://platform.deepseek.com DeepSeek prices: https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing The dataset, UCI Online Retail II (CC BY 4.0): https://archive.ics.uci.edu/dataset/502/online+retail+ii A note: free Claude Code means the Claude Code app for free, not Claude itself. Free tiers have daily limits, and Google says prompts on its free tier may be reviewed and used to train Google AI. Keep these for side projects and learning, not client code. If this helped, subscribe. Every week I show you how to actually use AI on real work, with the exact prompts I use. Rakhul