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Low-Cost AI API Gateway

What is Frugal Relay?

Section titled “What is Frugal Relay?”

Frugal Relay is a low-cost AI API gateway for GPT-5.6, Claude 5, and other currently listed models. It exposes OpenAI-compatible chat completions and Anthropic-compatible messages through https://frugalrelay.me/v1.

The public catalog currently lists 15 model entries. Prices depend on the selected route rather than one universal discount. The lowest listed rate is gpt-5.6-luna on the Plus Account Route at $0.009 input / $0.054 output per 1M tokens.

Why use an AI API gateway?

Section titled “Why use an AI API gateway?”
  • Lower route-specific prices: compare Plus, Pro, Claude, and Claude Sale rates.
  • One OpenAI-compatible base URL: reuse existing OpenAI SDK integrations for supported operations.
  • Multiple model families: use GPT-5.6, Claude 5, Claude 4.x, GPT-5.5, GPT-5.4, and GPT Image 2.
  • Centralized limits: create separate keys and spending limits for each application or environment.

Make an OpenAI-compatible request

Section titled “Make an OpenAI-compatible request”
from openai import OpenAI


client = OpenAI(
    api_key="fr-your-key-here",
    base_url="https://frugalrelay.me/v1",
)


response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="gpt-5.6-luna",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Summarize this changelog."}],
)

The model must be available to your account and selected route. Check the authenticated Models page before deploying a hard-coded model name.

Who is it for?

Section titled “Who is it for?”
  • SaaS teams comparing GPT-5.6 and Claude 5 API costs
  • Developers migrating an OpenAI-compatible application
  • AI agents that need per-key budgets and bounded retries
  • Teams evaluating several model families through one gateway

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”