Best LLM APIs deals

{"intro":"LLM API selection is rarely about finding a single best model — it is about routing each task to the right model with sensible fallbacks and clear unit economics. Think in task categories, not vendor allegiance.","criteria":[{"title":"Model fit per task type","body":"Frontier models excel at complex reasoning; smaller models win on cost and latency for routine generation and classification. Route each task to the cheapest model that meets your quality bar — single-model deployments overpay massively once volume scales. Build routing from day one, not as a retrofit."},{"title":"Token pricing and rate-limit architecture","body":"Compare input, output, and cached-prompt pricing separately — they often differ by an order of magnitude. Rate limits on sandbox tiers rarely reflect the limits you will hit in production. Confirm provisioned-throughput options and burst-limit behaviour before signing."},{"title":"Latency and streaming support","body":"Time-to-first-token and sustained tokens-per-second drive user-perceived speed. Streaming output, geographically distributed endpoints, and dedicated-throughput tiers separate production-grade APIs from playground-grade ones. Measure under real concurrency, not benchmarked single-request latency."},{"title":"Data privacy and retention policy","body":"Default retention windows vary widely and often include prompt review for abuse monitoring. Confirm zero-retention options, training opt-out, regional data residency, and relevant certifications — SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA BAAs where applicable — before sending production-grade or regulated data."},{"title":"Tool use and structured output reliability","body":"Native function-calling, JSON mode, and reliable structured-output adherence reduce parser fragility at every call site. Models that hallucinate around schemas or ignore tool signatures force defensive engineering overhead that compounds across a codebase."}],"pricingReality":"Prototype usage runs £8–80 per month on metered free credits or starter plans. Production B2B SaaS with moderate AI feature density lands between £400 and £4000 per month once volume scales. High-volume products and agent platforms routinely spend £15000 to several hundred thousand per month — prompt caching, model routing, and batching become the dominant unit-cost levers at that scale.","commonPitfalls":["Defaulting every call to the most expensive frontier model and ignoring task-level routing from the start.","Skipping prompt caching and paying repeatedly for identical large-context tokens across requests.","Building on a single provider without fallback logic when rate limits, pricing, or model quality shifts.","Sending sensitive or regulated data to default-retention endpoints instead of confirming zero-retention tiers first."]}