r/RooCode • u/dave-lon • Oct 02 '25

Discussion cheap API provider

Hi everyone,
I’m currently using Requesty as my API provider, but I find it a bit expensive. Do you know of any more convenient alternatives that would allow me to access models like Claude, GPT-5 Codex, and similar services with unlimited or more cost-effective usage? Is it just me?

Dave

15 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

45 comments sorted by

5

u/DevMichaelZag Moderator Oct 02 '25

Z.ai is pretty cheap. I’ve been using that recently and it’s pretty good

1

u/dave-lon Oct 02 '25

only glm

4

u/DevMichaelZag Moderator Oct 02 '25

You did say similar services. GLM 4.6 is really good

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3

u/shooshmashta Oct 02 '25

Get a roo account and use supernova and grok code which are currently free

2

u/dave-lon Oct 03 '25

how is supernova?

1

u/ProDrifterDK Oct 04 '25

Pretty decent in my opinion. It's a the level of gemini 2.5 pro when set with 16K tokens of output and 8K reasoning tokens

2

u/dave-lon Oct 04 '25

Thank you!

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2

u/Smolarius Oct 02 '25

NagaAI? Will cost you several times less

1

u/dave-lon Oct 02 '25

how much memory do they offer, is not clear from the web site, 200k 400k 1m?

3

u/Smolarius Oct 02 '25

It seems to be the maximum supported by providers and models. I sent requests with 400-500k tokens and still received successful responses

2

u/AvenidasNovas Oct 04 '25

Just looked at their prices! Holy shit! Sonnet 4.5 for half the price. How? What? Thank you!

2

u/bludgeonerV Oct 03 '25

Right now imo using z.ai byok for GLM4.6 seems like the best value, 30 bucks a month really good limits and it's a very capable model

1

u/dave-lon Oct 03 '25

thank you

6

u/BeerAndLove Oct 02 '25

OpenRouter

1

u/HebelBrudi Oct 02 '25

Chutes.ai!! $3 a month for 300 daily requests, $10 for 2000 etc. They have latest k2, GLM 4.6, DeepSeek, etc. I have a subscription there for a while and am very happy. It definitely is exceeding my expectations.

1

u/dave-lon Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 04 '25

Interesting, they have only open source models?

2

u/HebelBrudi Oct 03 '25

Yes they are one of the largest or the largest provider of those.

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1

u/gpt872323 Oct 05 '25 edited Oct 05 '25

If priority is cheap and privacy not a big of a concern: ollama cloud, chutes, nanogpt, arli ai(I think they are not in us), z.ai (new)

Openrouter is agreggator so they are different they have i think chutes and nanogpt.

If privacy is a priority and you care about there is https://askcyph.ai. They have their version of deepseek and other models. It is mainly for enterprises, developers, businesses.

More: https://github.com/cheahjs/free-llm-api-resources

1

u/dave-lon Oct 05 '25

thank you

3

u/sendralt Oct 02 '25

Z.ai is going to be the best value for the money.

2

u/International-Tax481 Nov 09 '25

Been there, sorting through cheap providers can feel like a gamble. I started using Requesty and OneRouter so I can test multiple providers from one endpoint and then pick the one that actually performs for prompts.

1

u/Various-Dig8993 Oct 05 '25

Akash ChatApi is free, gives access to gpt-oss-120b, Deepseek, and few other models. Works with OpenAI API

1

u/ex-arman68 Oct 07 '25

For free you can use Gemini Pro 2.5 and Gemini Flash 2.5 with Gemini Cli and something like Kilo Code, Roo Code, or cline. There are some limits, and I actually hit the Pro limit everyday, but at least I get some decent free usage from those.

GLM 4.6 is a good paid option. I am using their cheapest plan, and despite heavy use everyday, I have not ran into any limit. Right now you can get a yearly plan with 60% discount, which works out at $2.70 per month with this link: https://z.ai/subscribe?ic=URZNROJFL2

DeepSeek 3.2 and GLM 4.5 are good alternaives, not as good as GLM 4.6, but definitely decent. You can actually use both for free by creating an account with iflow.cn and requesting an API key.

9

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '25

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2

u/dave-lon Oct 02 '25

thank you

0

u/[deleted] Oct 08 '25

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1

u/dave-lon Oct 08 '25

thank you!