My LLM API Bill Hit $847/Month. Here is the Open-Source Proxy That Cut It to $89.

I built a single-file Python proxy that automatically routes LLM requests to the cheapest provider. DeepSeek, Gemini, OpenRouter - it picks the winner every time.

venerdì 5 giugno 2026 New tab

835 words~4 min read

My LLM API Bill Hit $847/Month. Here's the Open-Source Proxy That Cut It to $89.

Last November, I got the bill. $847.32 for LLM API calls.

I was using GPT-4o for everything — code generation, content writing, data analysis, chatbot responses. Most of those requests didn't need GPT-4o. A $0.14/M-token model could handle 80% of them just fine.

So I built a proxy. A single Python file. No framework, no dependencies, no Docker required (though I included one). It sits between your app and the LLM providers, and routes every request to the cheapest provider that can handle it.

My bill dropped to $89/month. That's an 89% reduction.

My LLM API Bill Hit $847/Month. Here is the Open-Source Proxy That Cut It to $89.

My LLM API Bill Hit $847/Month. Here is the Open-Source Proxy That Cut It to $89.

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Related reading

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LLM API pricing comparison: one schema across all 7 providers for $5.05/1K