6 Claude Code API gateways tested with real bills: same request costs $0.13 to $0.41
ApprehensiveBuddy425 · reddit · 2026-11-10
The author tested 6 of 10 API gateways for Claude Code before depositing money, comparing actual dashboard charges on identical requests (Nov 4-5).
- Method: pointed Claude Code at each gateway and ran claude -p "Reply with exactly the word OK" on Sonnet 5.5 and Fable 5.1; all checks returned OK
- Same Fable request cost $0.402 on OpenRouter, $0.4068 on Vercel AI Gateway, $0.403553 on NanoGPT, $0.4038 on Eden AI — but only $0.1328 on TeamoRouter (discounted Anthropic routes with intraday price swings)
- OpenRouter: $5 minimum top-up, 5.5% card fee, supports Alipay/USDC; 50 free-model requests/day, rising to 1,000 after a $10 purchase
- TeamoRouter Opus 5.5 tasks got billing-anomaly rebates ($0.05), so net prices aren't normal per-task costs
- Gotcha: a small output allowance can be entirely consumed by reasoning with no useful text returned
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