A few months ago, my monthly API bill hit . I was using GPT-4o and Claude for a SaaS app. Summarization, classification, extraction. Nothing crazy. Then I discovered Chinese AI models. DeepSeek V4. GLM-4. Qwen3. Same quality tier. Different planet pricing.
DeepSeek V4: .34/1M tokens vs GPT-5.5 at /1M. 43x cheaper. And from my testing, reasoning quality is within 2-3% on coding tasks.
The problem: Accessing Chinese models as a US dev is a nightmare. Chinese phone number. WeChat Pay. Separate API keys for each provider. Most devs just give up.
That is why I use ModelHub API (https://modelhub-api.com). One API key, 45+ Chinese models. OpenAI SDK compatible -- just change the base URL. Global credit cards work. No Chinese phone.
My bill went from to ~. Same volume.
Give it a try with free credit: https://modelhub-api.com
Launching June 11 on Product Hunt.
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