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title: "I spent ~4.5 months building a free, self-hosted AI gateway: one endpoint for 237 providers (90+ free), auto-fallback, and a token-compression pipeline (MIT) — Stuff That Spins"
description: "Sharing an open-source project I've put ~4.5 months into (disclosure: I'm the maintainer; per the self-advertisement rule I'm keeping the link in the first comment and making this post substantive). It started from two problems I hit daily: AI runs dying on a provider rate limit, and burning thousa…"
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date: "2026-07-02T17:32:12+00:00"
modified: "2026-07-02T22:00:48.43889+00:00"
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# I spent ~4.5 months building a free, self-hosted AI gateway: one endpoint for 237 providers (90+ free), auto-fallback, and a token-compression pipeline (MIT)

**Source:** Unknown  
**Published:** July 2, 2026  
**Original:** https://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/1ulotbw/i_spent_45_months_building_a_free_selfhosted_ai/  

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