Guide
The cheapest way to call frontier AI for side projects
Side projects don't need a subscription or a corporate budget. FrugalDev is prepaid from $5, every key carries a hard spend limit, and a runaway loop can never bill you for more than you've loaded — while you pay up to 85% less than list price.
Drop-in with the OpenAI SDK
Point the official OpenAI SDK at the FrugalDev base URL and pass your prepaid key. Change the model string to gpt-5.5 — no other code changes.
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(
api_key="YOUR_FRUGALDEV_KEY",
base_url="https://api-direct.apikey.cloud/openai/v1",
)
resp = client.chat.completions.create(
model="gpt-5.5",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Say hello in one sentence."}],
)
print(resp.choices[0].message.content)Per-token pricing
USD / 1M tokens| Model | Input | Output | Cache R | Cache W | Official I/O | Save |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-5.5 | $0.80 | $4.76 | $0.080 | $0.080 | $5 / $30 | −84% |
| GPT-5.4 | $0.40 | $2.39 | $0.040 | $0.040 | $2.5 / $15 | −84% |
| GPT-5.4 Mini | $0.12 | $0.72 | $0.012 | $0.012 | $0.75 / $4.5 | −84% |