Switzerland, as software
You Don't Have to Marry an AI Company
The short answer. Somewhere in the last few years, AI companies became identity flags. People don't just use a model anymore — they align with one, and have opinions about yours. Which would all be harmless sport, except that in the subscription world your choice of AI is a marriage: their app holds your history, their policies hold your data, and leaving means starting over as a stranger. Fred is built on the opposite idea. The assistant is yours; the AI companies are suppliers. Bring whichever one's key you like today, switch when you change your mind, and nothing about your life with Fred moves an inch.
The situation
Every AI brand comes with feelings now
Maybe you admire one lab's safety work and roll your eyes at another's hype. Maybe a company's leadership puts you off, or its politics, or just its vibe. You're allowed. But here's the thing subscription products quietly do: they convert those feelings into switching costs. Love the model, tolerate the company — or leave and abandon your accumulated context. That's not loyalty; that's leverage.
The Fred position
Models are staff, not spouses
Fred runs on your machine and holds what matters — your files, its memory of you, your agents and workflows — on your disk. The thinking is bring-your-own-key across Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI, Google Gemini, AWS Bedrock, DeepSeek, Groq, xAI (Grok), and local models via Ollama. Any of them can be hired for a task, promoted, benched, or let go from a dashboard dropdown. None of them can hold your assistant hostage, because none of them ever had it.
- Curious about a model but not its ecosystem? Bring its API key and use it inside Fred — Grok without living on X, for instance. No social account, no feed, just the model doing work.
- Refuse to touch a company on principle? Equally fine. No provider is load-bearing; skip any of them forever and Fred neither knows nor cares.
- Change your mind next year? The dropdown is still there. Your memory, files, and workflows don't blink.
Why this matters more every year
The companies will keep giving you reasons
Prices change. Models get retired mid-workflow. Leadership does something you have thoughts about. Terms get rewritten. In the marriage model, every one of those is your problem to absorb. In the supplier model, each one is a dropdown decision. The decade ahead will be full of AI-company drama — owning your harness is how you get to watch it like the weather instead of living in it.
The honest terms
What stays true with every provider
- Their key, their terms. Requests you send a provider are governed by that provider's data policy, and conversations travel to whichever model is thinking. What never travels: your files, your credentials, Fred's memory.
- The meter is real everywhere. Each provider bills your key at their rates; the dashboard shows spend live. Local models via Ollama cost nothing per call and lean on your hardware instead.
- Provider lists evolve. The engine's supported roster grows with the open-source platform Fred is built on — what we list here is what's true today, not a promise about tomorrow's market.
Pricing
Marry nothing. Own the home.
Every agent, every workflow, the dashboard, the Android app, and the owner's guide — from day one. No subscription. Bring your own AI key — any of them. 14-day refund window. One machine at a time.
One-time purchase · licence key by email in minutes · 14-day refund window
FAQ
Questions people ask
Which AI companies' models can Fred use?
Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI, Google Gemini, AWS Bedrock, DeepSeek, Groq, xAI (Grok), and local models via Ollama. Each on your own key, switched from the dashboard whenever you like.
So I can use Grok without being on X?
Yes — bring an xAI API key and Grok models answer inside Fred like any other provider, no social platform involved. And if you'd rather never touch it, that costs you nothing either: the whole point is that no single company's models are load-bearing.
What survives when I switch providers?
Everything that matters: Fred itself, all sixteen agents, your workflows, your files, and Fred's memory of you — it all lives on your machine and belongs to the assistant, not to any model. Switching is a dashboard control, not a migration.
Do the providers' rules still apply?
On their own keys, yes — each provider's terms and data policy govern the requests you send them, and conversations travel to whichever model is doing the thinking. What no provider ever holds: your files, your credentials, or Fred's memory.
What if a provider raises prices or retires a model?
You change a dropdown. That's the entire disaster-recovery plan, and it's why owning the harness matters more than picking the perfect model — the perfect model changes every few months anyway.
Before you go
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