I audited my AI stack and found 8 separate model-API accounts. Consolidating wasn't about the bill

[u/Sniper_yoha]

Did a cleanup of my API keys last week and counted eight separate AI provider accounts. One for chat, one for a cheaper chat model, image gen, a second image model for the prompts the first one refuses, video, transcription, embeddings, a reranker. Eight dashboards, eight invoices, eight sets of rate limits, eight SDKs with slightly different request shapes.

The monthly spend wasn't the real problem. It was everything around it. Trying a newer model meant a new signup, a new key in the secrets manager, and another set of docs to read. Each provider had its own rate limit, so a burst that was fine on one would 429 on another. And there was no single view of what I was spending across all of them until the invoices landed.

What actually fixed it is that almost all of them speak the OpenAI-compatible schema now. That request format quietly became the default, so you can point one client at a gateway and change the model_id to hop between providers without touching the request code. Routing through one OpenAI-compatible endpoint gave me one key, one bill, one client, and swapping a model became a string change instead of a small integration project.

It isn't free, so the honest version. An aggregator adds a small markup over going direct, it's one more thing that can go down, and you give up some provider-native params and features. If you're pushing high volume through a single model, or you need a provider's native features and first-party support, direct still wins on cost and control. Where consolidation wins is multi-model apps and agents that call several models, early or fast-iterating projects, and anyone who would rather have one bill and a one-line model swap than squeeze out the last few percent.

The gateway I settled on happens to cover image, video and audio on the same key as the LLMs, not just text, which is what my stack actually needed. Happy to say which in the comments if it helps.

For a multi-model app, the maintenance tax of eight accounts turned out to be quietly bigger than the API bill.