CC Switch
A free, open-source desktop app that centralises provider settings for seven AI coding command-line tools, including Claude Code, Codex and Gemini CLI. It adds one-click switching, local routing, automatic failover and precise token-cost tracking, with every key stored locally.
What is CC Switch?
CC Switch is a cross-platform desktop application, released as open source under the MIT licence, that centralises the configuration of AI coding command-line tools. It targets developers who move between several API providers and end up editing configuration files by hand every time. The publisher names four problems it sets out to solve: tedious provider switching, configurations scattered across incompatible formats, no visibility on how many calls were made or what they cost, and work interrupted whenever a single provider goes down.
Seven applications are managed from one window: Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, OpenClaw and Hermes. The 3.20.0 release of 18 August 2026 announces Pi as a ninth managed application, so the figure quoted across the marketing pages is already behind the product. Provider management covers one-click switching, a broad preset catalogue that pre-fills endpoints, a universal provider shared across applications, direct mode and model mapping for Claude Desktop, balance and quota lookups, and endpoint speed testing.
The second pillar is the local routing service, an HTTP proxy listening on 127.0.0.1:15721 by default. Once an application is routed through it, requests are logged, tokens are counted, and formats are converted automatically between Anthropic Messages, OpenAI Chat Completions and OpenAI Responses, in streaming and non-streaming mode alike. On top of that sits high availability: an ordered failover queue per application, automatic switching, and a circuit breaker with a failure threshold and a recovery wait of sixty seconds by default.
Extensions round out the picture, with management of MCP servers, Prompts, Skills, sessions, the OpenClaw workspace and Hermes memory. Technically the app pairs a React 18, TypeScript and Tailwind front end with a Tauri 2 and Rust back end, storing data in SQLite and device settings in JSON. It runs on Windows 10 and later, macOS 12 Monterey and later on both Intel and Apple Silicon, and Linux from Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 11 or Fedora 34, in x64 and ARM64. macOS builds are signed and notarised by Apple, the interface speaks English, Simplified Chinese and Japanese, and twenty-nine versions have shipped between November 2025 and August 2026.
What it does
- Switch API provider in one click, from the main window or from the system tray menu
- Manage seven AI coding applications from a single interface instead of seven configuration formats
- Add a provider from a preset that pre-fills the endpoint, leaving only the API key to paste
- Run a local routing service that logs requests and counts tokens on the machine
- Build an ordered failover queue and let the circuit breaker switch providers automatically
- Track requests, tokens, cache activity, subscription quota and cost over 1 to 30 days
- Manage MCP servers, Skills, Prompts, sessions and Hermes memory without editing JSON
When to use CC Switch / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if CC Switch is the right fit.
When to use CC Switch
- Developers who juggle several API providers on the same coding assistant and are tired of editing configuration files by hand
- Teams that need to see, per provider and per application, how many tokens they burn and what it actually costs
- Anyone running Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, OpenClaw or Hermes side by side, each with its own configuration format
- Engineers who cannot afford an interrupted workflow and want a failover queue to take over when a provider goes down
- Privacy-minded practitioners who refuse to hand their API keys to a hosted service and want everything in a local database
When not to use CC Switch
- Anyone looking for a coding assistant: CC Switch writes no code, it only configures the tools that do
- Users who expect API keys or credits to be supplied; you bring your own provider accounts
- Mobile or browser-only users, since the product ships as a desktop application for macOS, Windows and Linux
- Organisations bound by formal vendor review, because the site publishes no privacy policy, no terms and no legal entity
- People uncomfortable letting a desktop app rewrite the configuration files of their command-line tools
How to use CC Switch
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Make sure the command-line tools you want to manage are installed, which means Node.js 18 LTS or later for Claude Code, Codex and Gemini CLI
- Install CC Switch itself: brew install --cask cc-switch on macOS, the MSI or portable build on Windows, the AUR package, a .deb or an AppImage on Linux
- Alternatively download the installer from the site or from GitHub Releases, and compare the published SHA-256 with the file you received
- Launch the app and click the + button at the top right of the main window
- Pick your provider from the preset list, which pre-fills the endpoint, or choose Custom for a manual setup, then paste your API key
- Click Enable on the provider card, or select the provider directly from the system tray menu
- Restart the command-line tool if needed: Claude Code and Gemini reload on their own, while Codex, OpenCode and OpenClaw require a new terminal
- Verify by launching the tool and asking a simple question
- Turn on the routing service from the toolbar toggle or from Settings, then enable routing for the applications you want logged
- Finish by building the failover queue, ordering the backup providers and switching automatic failover on
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Completely free and open source under the MIT licence, with auditable code in a public repository
- API keys and configurations stay in a local SQLite database and, according to the publisher, are never uploaded anywhere
- Seven AI coding tools handled in one place, each with its own configuration format taken care of
- Automatic failover and a circuit breaker keep work going when a provider becomes unavailable
- Genuine cost visibility, down to cache tokens, subscription quota and a per-model pricing corrector
- Careful packaging: Apple-signed and notarised macOS builds, published SHA-256 hashes, Homebrew, AUR, deb and AppImage
- Sustained release pace, twenty-nine versions in ten months, with structured documentation in three languages
Cons
- No privacy policy, no terms of service and no legal notice anywhere on the site
- No legal entity and no postal address are identified, leaving no interlocutor should anything go wrong
- A single contact address, support@ccswitch.io, with no separate legal or data protection channel
- The Codex OAuth reverse proxy relies on a reverse-engineered flow that may breach OpenAI terms, at the user's own risk
- Desktop only, with no web or mobile version
- Default language, preset ecosystem and sponsor list are heavily oriented towards the Chinese market
- Marketing pages still announce seven managed applications while the 3.20.0 changelog announces nine
Pricing & Plans
CC Switch is free of charge. It is distributed as open source under the MIT licence, with no paid tier, no subscription and no account to create, and the site's own structured data declares the application freely accessible with an offer priced at 0 USD. The only expenditure involved is the user's own provider subscriptions and API keys, which the application merely orchestrates. Development is funded through a sponsorship programme listing twenty-nine sponsors, not through product sales. No enterprise tier is published.
- the single distribution of the product
- released under the MIT licence
- with every feature included and no paid tier
- Available from the official download page
- from GitHub Releases
- from Homebrew as the cc-switch cask
- and from the AUR as cc-switch-bin
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how CC Switch handles your data.
GDPR overview
There is no mention of the GDPR anywhere on the site, and no privacy policy, terms of service or legal notice is published. No Article 27 representative is designated, no data protection officer is named, no privacy contact address exists, no Data Processing Agreement is offered and no sub-processor list is disclosed. That silence should be read alongside the architecture: the product is a local desktop application, it requires no account and no sign-up, its database stays on the user's own machine, and the publisher states that keys are never uploaded. The optional WebDAV synchronisation targets a server chosen by the user, not the publisher. The MIT-licensed source code makes those claims verifiable by a third party, but verification is not compliance documentation.
Who owns the data?
No terms of service or privacy policy is published, so nothing contractually assigns ownership. What the product documentation does state is that configurations and API keys live in a local SQLite database, under ~/.cc-switch/ by default, and are never uploaded to any server; the same is said of OAuth refresh tokens. In practice the user keeps everything: settings can be exported to a readable JSON file at any moment, backups sit on the same machine, and the optional WebDAV sync pushes the database to a server the user chooses and administers. The publisher operates no account system and receives nothing.
Reuse rights
Nothing restricts reuse, because no agreement is imposed in the first place. The application writes the configuration files of the tools it manages, under ~/.claude/, ~/.codex/, ~/.gemini/, ~/.opencode/ and ~/.openclaw/, and those files remain the user's own. When local routing is switched on, requests from the command-line tools pass through 127.0.0.1:15721, where they are logged and counted; logging can be disabled and the log level runs from error to trace. Usage statistics, including the Codex figures parsed from JSONL session logs since version 3.13.0, are computed from those local logs alone. No telemetry to the publisher is described anywhere, and the source code is public under the MIT licence, so anyone can export, script or audit what happens to the data.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
There is effectively no vendor-side hosting to describe. The application keeps everything on the user's own machine: a local SQLite database for providers, MCP servers and prompts, JSON for device settings, both under ~/.cc-switch/ by default, with backups in the backups subfolder and logs in the logs subfolder. The publisher operates no account system and states that keys and configurations are never uploaded. The only route out of the machine is the optional WebDAV synchronisation, which targets a server the user selects and administers, whether Jianguoyun, Nextcloud, Synology or a custom endpoint. The website itself is served behind Cloudflare, resolved through an anycast address in the United States, but that concerns the marketing pages only and says nothing about user data. Consequently no hosting country or region is declared, and no jurisdiction is claimed. Anyone needing a documented hosting jurisdiction will not find one here, for the simple reason that there is no online service to host.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting CC Switch.
- No privacy policy and no terms of service means nothing contractually binds the publisher on how your data is handled
- No legal entity and no address are disclosed, so there is no identifiable counterpart in the event of a dispute
- The Codex OAuth and GitHub Copilot reverse proxies rely on reverse-engineered flows; the publisher warns of possible terms-of-service breaches and account suspension, entirely at your risk
- The app writes into your command-line tools' configuration files and can inject values such as skipIntroduction or primaryApiKey
- The routing listener can be set to 0.0.0.0, which exposes the local proxy to your whole network
- WebDAV synchronisation overwrites: an upload replaces the remote database, a download replaces the local one, and only the download creates a safety backup first
- The publisher warns that any CC Switch site or client asking for payment, top-ups or credentials is counterfeit, so download only from the official site, GitHub Releases or the repository
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Installation is straightforward: a Homebrew cask, an MSI or portable build, an AppImage, a deb package or an AUR entry, with Apple-notarised macOS binaries that open without workarounds. First use is announced at five minutes and takes three steps: add a provider from a preset, enable it, restart the command-line tool if needed. The real prerequisite is already running those tools, hence Node.js 18 LTS or later. Difficulty concentrates in the advanced settings, such as failover queues, circuit-breaker thresholds, per-provider API formats and custom usage-query scripts. The audience is developers comfortable with a terminal.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind CC Switch
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
Is CC Switch free?
Which AI coding tools does it manage?
Are my API keys safe?
Does local routing slow requests down?
Which systems are supported?
Why did my provider switch not take effect?
The routing service will not start. What now?
Can I synchronise my configuration across machines?
What are the risks of the Codex OAuth reverse proxy?
Where do I get help?
Should you pick CC Switch?
CC Switch belongs to a category that rarely gets attention: workstation plumbing. It writes no code and generates nothing, it simply removes the friction that piles up around AI coding tools once you use more than one provider. Its value is concrete and easy to state. Manual editing of configuration files disappears, provider switching becomes a click in a tray menu, and the cost of every call finally becomes visible, cache tokens and subscription quota included. The local routing service adds real resilience, with an ordered failover queue and a circuit breaker that keep a session alive when a provider fails.
The engineering around it inspires confidence. Twenty-nine releases in ten months, documentation structured in five sections and three languages, Apple-signed and notarised macOS builds, published SHA-256 hashes, and packaging through Homebrew, the AUR, deb and AppImage. Being free under the MIT licence with no data collection in return is unusually clean: the database stays on your machine, there is no account, and the code can be read by anyone.
The reservation is on the governance side. There is no privacy policy, no terms of service, no legal entity and no postal address, only a single support mailbox. For personal use that matters little; for a company with a vendor review process it is a real obstacle, and the honest answer is that the architecture, not a contract, is what limits exposure here. One feature deserves its own caution: the Codex OAuth reverse proxy runs on a reverse-engineered flow that the publisher itself flags as risky for your account. Used for what it does best, provider orchestration and cost visibility, CC Switch is a genuinely useful piece of daily equipment.
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