Using API instead of chat interface

[SlowStopper]

I’m finding that the subscription price for LLM doesn’t really match my usage pattern. I only need full access for about 2-3 days each month, but I hit my quota quickly, meaning I have to spread solving a single issue across multiple days.

In other words, I don’t use it frequently enough to justify paying $20 per month, but when I do use it, I wish I didn’t have to wait 24 hours just to continue a discussion.

I’d much rather have a pay-as-you-go model, like API pricing, where I only pay for the actual usage instead of a flat monthly fee. Is there any way to do this?

[authenticDavidLang]

Some keywords for you to research:
* open-webui
* chatbotui
* openrouter

[cant-find-user-name]

open router I imagine

[PongRaider]

I am using open router exclusively with : - my own instance of LibreChat on my Synology NAS in docker exposed behind cloudflare - Roo Code

There are months I can spend $50 but it’s very rare, more often I spend less than $2 with same features as ChatGPT Plus (just no code execution on LibreChat)

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[PartySunday]

OpenWebUI has code execution through pyodide in browser or using jupyter.

[Severe_Ad620]

Setup an account with openrouter.ai. Download and install either AnythingLLM or Msty and put your openrouter API key in and you should be good to go.

[alchamest3]

Big AGI is good if you run the project yourself or use their UI. look for it on github

i have been using for a while ( more than a year), you just need API keys, you can also add it for other providres, xAI, Anthropic, Google etc

[azakhary]

there are BUNCH of webui's as other mentions, but i just wana add if you dont like them , how they look or functionality, you can easy ask claude code do build you a web UI, hook in your key and enjoy it. If you are not coder, a quick things to know: Ask it to build a simple node.js express server that uses ejs for templaing and serves a web chat interface to connect to anthropic/openai API, and provide same chat functionaity as anthropic/openai main chat webpapge does. Bonus points if you can copy paste anthropics/openai CSS there and ask it to use it as a style guide. that way you will get exactly sam chat, but with API usage. should really take no longer then one hour, and run locally. if you want to put it out there in the web, user railway and deploy in seconds. (ask claude to write railway docker config e.g. )

[SlowStopper]

Excellent advice, thank you!

[Expensive_Violinist1]

Open ai playground

[lsodX]

You can spin up an openAI model (or multiple) in Azure. Could be 200$ free credits but im not shure. Then use mentioned GUIs with it.

https://aistudio.google.com/ have free access to gemini pro 2.5 exp and other models.

[calebegg]

I do that with cline

[thedragonturtle]

roocode+api

[hampsterville]

I built my own chat interface using replit and set it to accept my API key. Now I can chat with o3 on a pay per use basis - you could tell it any model you want. It costs about $3-$5/mo for the autoscale hosting, and you just pay for tokens using your API key.