Free for 14 days. Then a base fee, and a share of what we actually save you.

What counts as a realized saving

Only two things, both measured at the gateway on the request itself — not modelled, not projected, not estimated from a sample:

• A cache hit. An identical deterministic request served from cache costs nothing. The saving recorded is exactly what the original call cost.
• An automatic downgrade. When routing moves a call to a cheaper model, the saving is what the originally requested model would have cost for those same token counts, minus what the cheaper model actually cost.

A recommendation you have not accepted is not a saving. A projection is not a saving. Both are on your dashboard, clearly separated from the realized figure the fee is calculated on.

How it is billed

• The $99 base is a PayPal subscription you approve once.
• The 30% success fee is a separate PayPal invoice raised once a month for 30% of that month’s realized savings.
• Months where the fee would come to less than $1 are skipped entirely — nothing is charged.

Payment processing is configuration-driven; if it is not yet live in your region or account, the billing endpoints say so rather than failing quietly, and the status page reports billing as not enabled.

The Reliability add-on

Reliability is a separate, flat $49/month add-on — a different buyer (whoever owns whether the bot behaves) and a predictable price, not tied to savings. It unlocks the judge-based detectors (self-contradiction, instruction drift, grounding), the confusion map, response capture and reliability alerts.

• Free hook. The deterministic detectors — format breaks, degenerate output, refusals — and the consistency score run on every plan, including a lapsed trial. That’s the passive score.
• Metered active tests. Each account gets 20 active Consistency Test runs a month included; beyond that they’re $0.50 per run, because each one spends your provider tokens through your own stored key. Overage appears on the same monthly invoice as the success fee.
• During the free trial the add-on is included, so you can see the reliability report before you decide.

The flat $49 is a PayPal subscription you approve once; the metered test overage is billed on the monthly invoice. See how reliability works.

What happens when the trial ends

Because your card is on file, the trial converts to Pro automatically on day 14 — nothing in your setup changes, and the first $99 is charged then. If you cancel before day 14you are never charged. Cancel later and you keep your ledger — logging, pricing, the waste score, the recommendations and detect-mode guardrails carry on; what stops is the part that changes your requests: automatic caching, automatic model routing, and enforce mode on the guardrails.

When ModelGate is worth it — and when to wait

Two things decide it, and we would rather say so now.

• Spend. Below roughly $500 a month on model APIs, even a large percentage cut is a small absolute number — rarely worth changing how you call your models.
• Traffic history. Waste is a pattern. Week one prices your spend to the token; what repeats, what is oversized and what is overpaying only becomes visible once there is volume behind it.

Questions

The Terms of Service cover fees, cancellation and refunds in full. Anything else: support@modelgatehq.com.