Compare Cheaper Inference vs. Spanlens

Cheaper Inference serves as an API gateway compatible with OpenAI, enabling users to access various AI models from different providers through a unified API key, thus eliminating the need for any changes in request formatting. Developers have the flexibility to switch providers simply by updating the base URL and API key while retaining the same model, messages, tools, streaming configurations, and response management. This service accommodates both text and image models, facilitates vision-enabled chat requests, offers streaming capabilities, includes prompt caching, provides reasoning controls, and allows temporary image uploads for more extensive vision data. Each request can have its model selected individually, and users can filter the catalog based on model type, vision capabilities, reasoning options, streaming availability, or provider identity. The system includes automatic retries to manage network disruptions and provider errors, with fallback routes available for eligible requests to prevent failures. Additionally, every request is documented in the History section, allowing teams to track request volume, token consumption, and overall operational activity, ensuring comprehensive oversight and management of AI interactions. This transparency assists in optimizing usage and understanding patterns over time.

Spanlens is an open-source observability platform licensed under MIT that enables developers to effectively track each interaction their applications have with services like OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Mistral, OpenRouter, Azure OpenAI, or a local Ollama model. The integration process is incredibly simple, requiring just a single line of code to change the client's baseURL to the Spanlens proxy, or by executing "npx @spanlens/cli init," which prompts a wizard to automatically adjust your code. Once integrated, all requests are meticulously logged, capturing details such as the model used, token counts, latency, cost, and the complete prompt and response body, while also seamlessly reconstructing streaming responses. The accompanying dashboard transforms this raw log data into actionable operational insights. Cost tracking functionality allows users to break down expenditures by individual requests, models, and end users, while also distinguishing prompt-cache tokens to provide clarity on actual savings rather than simply the total costs. Additionally, agent tracing presents multi-step workflows visually, using Gantt waterfalls and node-and-edge graphs to emphasize the critical path, enabling developers to pinpoint the slowest dependencies in a fan-out scenario. This comprehensive approach not only enhances visibility but also empowers users to optimize their model interactions for better efficiency and cost management.