Route your model traffic through ModelGate.

Quickstart

Four steps, about five minutes:

1. Open an account and sign in to the dashboard.
2. Add a provider key. Under Provider credentials, paste your own OpenAI, Anthropic or Google key. It’s encrypted at rest and never shown again.
3. Create a ModelGate API key under API keys. Copy it — it’s shown once.
4. Point your SDK at ModelGate by changing the base URL (below). Your existing code keeps working.

Authentication

Every request carries your ModelGate API key in the x-api-key header. The key identifies your project; provider keys are looked up server-side, so no provider secret ever leaves your dashboard.

x-api-key: mg_live_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Keys can be revoked any time from the dashboard; a revoked key stops working immediately.

Making a request

The gateway speaks the OpenAI Chat Completions format at POST https://gw.modelgatehq.com/v1/chat/completions. Send the same body you’d send to OpenAI — model and messages — and ModelGate forwards it to whichever provider owns that model, using your stored key.

curl

curl https://gw.modelgatehq.com/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -H "x-api-key: $MODELGATE_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "model": "gpt-4o-mini",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Ping"}]
  }'

OpenAI SDK (Python)

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://gw.modelgatehq.com/v1",
    api_key="unused",                 # ignored; ModelGate uses x-api-key
    default_headers={"x-api-key": "YOUR_MODELGATE_KEY"},
)

resp = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="gpt-4o-mini",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Ping"}],
)
print(resp.choices[0].message.content)

OpenAI SDK (Node)

import OpenAI from "openai";

const client = new OpenAI({
  baseURL: "https://gw.modelgatehq.com/v1",
  apiKey: "unused",
  defaultHeaders: { "x-api-key": process.env.MODELGATE_API_KEY },
});

const resp = await client.chat.completions.create({
  model: "gpt-4o-mini",
  messages: [{ role: "user", content: "Ping" }],
});

The response comes back in the same OpenAI shape regardless of which provider served it, so anything that parses a Chat Completions response keeps working.

Supported models

Use the provider’s own model name. Prices below are per million tokens, for reference.

Pricing is stored in a versioned rate table and used to cost every request exactly — no estimates, no sampling. Rates change; the dashboard always reflects the table in force at the time of each call.

Optimization

ModelGate watches your traffic for two kinds of waste and can act on them. Each is configured per project in Settings, and each has a safe middle setting that only recommends before it ever changes a request.

Exact-response caching

Identical, deterministic requests (same model, same messages, temperature 0) can be served from a cache instead of paying the provider again.

• OFF — never cache.
• RECOMMENDATION_ONLY — measure how much caching would save, change nothing.
• AUTO — serve repeats from cache. A cache hit costs $0; the saving is what the original call cost.

Model routing

When a small, simple call is running on a premium model, ModelGate can route it to a cheaper model that does the same job.

• OFF / RECOMMENDATION_ONLY — leave requests untouched; flag candidates.
• SAFE_AUTO — downgrade only clear-cut cases, with legal/medical/financial/security prompts protected.
• AGGRESSIVE_AUTO — downgrade wherever the heuristics find a cheaper model that fits.

The savings from automatic caching and downgrades are what we call realized savings — measured at the gateway, shown on your dashboard, and the basis for the success fee.

Security guardrails

The gateway can inspect traffic in both directions and act on it. Each category is a per-project setting in Settings with three levels — the same OFF → DETECT → ENFORCE ladder as the optimizations. Detect logs incidents to the Security page without changing any request; Enforce blocks or redacts. Incidents are stored with a masked snippet only — the raw secret or PII value is never persisted.

• Prompt-injection shield (inbound) — scores untrusted input for jailbreak and instruction-override attempts; ENFORCE refuses a high-risk request with 403 blocked_by_guardrails before it reaches a provider.
• Secret-leak prevention (outbound) — signature + entropy detection for API keys, tokens, private keys and connection strings; ENFORCE redacts them from the response.
• PII protection (outbound) — emails, Luhn-valid card numbers, SSNs and more; ENFORCE masks them before the response is returned.

DETECT is available on every plan. ENFORCE (active blocking/redaction) is a paid capability, like the automatic optimizations.

Spend controls

Managed at the gate, before you’re billed by a provider. Set them per project in Settings:

• Requests per minute — a rate ceiling per API key.
• Max prompt / output tokens — reject oversized calls.
• Monthly spend cap (USD) — once the month’s provider spend hits the cap, further requests are refused with 402 until the cap is raised or the month rolls over.

Errors

Billing

Every account starts with a 3-month free trial — the full product, no card, no charge. After that, Pro is $99/month plus 30% of the savings the gateway realizes for you. If nothing is saved, there’s nothing to pay beyond the base.

The $99 base is a PayPal subscription. The 30% success fee is billed once a month as a separate PayPal invoice for 30% of that month’s realized savings. Full detail is on your dashboard’s Billing page. See also the Terms and Privacy Policy.

Questions

Email support@modelgatehq.com and we’ll help you get set up.