Trust Center — Transparency, Evidence & Accountability

1. Who Operates CheapAI

CheapAI is operated by a small developer team. Legal operating details are disclosed in the Impressum as required by applicable law.

The team has an established background in API infrastructure and developer tooling. CheapAI was built out of direct frustration with the cost of accessing frontier AI models during active development projects.

Contact: Telegram @cheapai1sell · cheapai.info@gmail.com

2. What CheapAI Is

CheapAI is an OpenAI-compatible API proxy service that routes developer requests to upstream AI model providers (currently Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek, and OpenAI-tier models). CheapAI pools aggregate developer usage volume to access better pricing tiers than individual pay-as-you-go plans provide, and passes those savings to customers.

OpenAI SDK-compatible — works with any tool that accepts a custom base URL and API key.
Supports Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, and GPT-tier models through a single endpoint.
Tested integrations include Cursor AI, Claude Code, Open WebUI, and direct API calls. See compatibility matrix.
Pricing is set by CheapAI and is lower than official provider pay-as-you-go rates. See pricing tracker for verified official rates and savings comparisons.

3. What CheapAI Is Not

Not an official representative of any AI provider. CheapAI has no official reseller or partner relationship with Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, or DeepSeek.
Not a storage or training service. CheapAI does not train models on your data or store prompt content beyond per-request billing validation.
Not a fully managed enterprise AI platform. CheapAI is developer infrastructure. It does not include model fine-tuning, managed vector storage, or analytics dashboards.
Not a guaranteed-uptime SLA service. CheapAI does not offer a financially backed SLA. See service status.
Not a source of official provider model IDs for all models. Some CheapAI model names (GPT-5.x series) are internal routing labels with no confirmed public OpenAI model ID as of April 2026. This is disclosed in the pricing table and in the pricing tracker.

4. How Orders and Access Work

CheapAI offers two main access models:

Token credit packs: One-time purchases of a fixed token allowance at a discounted per-token rate. When your balance is exhausted, you purchase more.
Monthly subscription plans: Fixed monthly cost for a rolling token allowance. See the pricing page for current plan details.

After payment, you receive an API key and the proxy base URL. Expected delivery time is within 24 hours in most cases (typically much faster). If you have not received your credentials after 24 hours, contact support immediately.

Accepted payment methods include cryptocurrency. CheapAI does not store payment card data.

5. Data Handling & Privacy

Prompt and completion content is forwarded to the upstream provider (Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek, or OpenAI-tier) and is not additionally stored by CheapAI beyond request processing.
Request metadata — timestamp, model name, token count, key identifier — is retained for billing purposes.
Upstream provider data policies apply to your prompts as normal. CheapAI does not intercept or modify prompt content.
CheapAI does not add your data to any training dataset.

Recommendation: Do not send confidential, personally identifiable, or regulated data through any shared API proxy — including CheapAI. If your use case requires data residency guarantees or a signed DPA, CheapAI is not the right fit.

Full details: Privacy Policy · Terms of Service

6. Support Channels & Response Expectations

Telegram: @cheapai1sell — primary support channel. Fastest response times.
Email: cheapai.info@gmail.com — for formal requests or if Telegram is not accessible.

CheapAI is a small team. Response times are typically within 24 hours during working hours. High-priority issues (access not working, payment confirmed but credentials not received) are handled as quickly as possible. No formal SLA for response time exists.

7. Refund, Replacement & Guarantee Policy

If you paid and did not receive access credentials within 24 hours, contact support. This will be resolved promptly.
If there is a sustained, confirmed outage on CheapAI's side (not an upstream provider outage), credit or replacement is offered.
Refunds for used token balances are generally not offered, as the service was delivered. Contact support to discuss specific situations.
CheapAI does not guarantee any specific performance from upstream AI models in terms of output quality — this is a property of the provider model, not the proxy.

Full legally binding terms are in the AGB (Terms of Service). The bullets above are a plain-language summary, not a legal commitment.

8. Compatibility Proof & Tested Integrations

See the compatibility matrix for a full breakdown. Summary as of March 2026:

Integration	Status	Tested
Cursor AI (v0.40+)	Tested	March 2026
Claude Code (terminal)	Tested	March 2026
Open WebUI (admin connection)	Tested	March 2026
Direct API / curl / Python openai	Tested	March 2026
LangChain, LlamaIndex	Partially Tested	Basic chat confirmed only

Full test evidence (date, scope, proof) at compatibility-matrix.html

9. Pricing Methodology & Sources

CheapAI's pricing tables are generated from a structured data file (data/models.json) with explicit verification_status per model:

Verified — official provider model ID and pricing confirmed directly from the provider's pricing page on the checked date.
Partially verified — model family confirmed, but exact versioned pricing may vary. Check provider page for production use.
Unverified — CheapAI internal routing label. No official provider model ID found on the provider pricing page as of the checked date. No official pricing is claimed for these rows.

Official price sources: Anthropic · Google Gemini API · DeepSeek · OpenAI

Full pricing tracker: ai-api-pricing-tracker.html

10. Service Status & Uptime

Live routing status is available at service-status.html. Key facts:

Status figures reflect CheapAI's proxy routing availability, not upstream provider availability.
CheapAI does not operate a real-time status dashboard that auto-refreshes. The page is updated approximately weekly.
No financially backed SLA exists. CheapAI is a best-effort infrastructure service.
Provider-side outages are not counted as CheapAI outages; see the service status methodology.

11. Risks, Limitations & What Is Not Guaranteed

Model availability: Upstream providers may remove or change models without notice. CheapAI will update routing when notified, but cannot prevent provider-side changes.
GPT-5.x model IDs are unverified CheapAI labels. If OpenAI does not publicly offer a model matching these IDs on their API, CheapAI's routing may resolve to the closest available equivalent.
Gemini preview models are in preview status and subject to Google's preview terms (pricing and availability may change).
Rate limiting: CheapAI applies fair-use rate limiting on shared infrastructure. Very high-volume burst use may be throttled.
Regulatory compliance: CheapAI does not offer HIPAA, SOC 2, or similar compliance certifications. It is not intended for regulated workloads.
Output quality: CheapAI routes to the underlying provider model. Output quality is determined by the model, not the proxy. CheapAI does not filter, augment, or alter model responses.
Business continuity: CheapAI is a small team. If the service were to wind down, existing customers would receive notice and any unused balance would be addressed per the terms of service.

CheapAI Trust Center