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AI · alternatives · 2026

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24 alternatives to I built a tool to find the best and cheapest LLM models for my projects

Hey HN, I've been working on something cool that I wanted to share with you all. It's called Viewpoint, an analytics tool for LLMs like OpenAI, Anthropic models, and Gemini. The idea came from the constant flood of new LLM models and the need to figure out which ones work best for my projects without breaking the bank. With viewpoint, I can track token usage, costs, latency(WIP), and traffic over time, making it easier to compare different models and see which ones perform best and save money. The tool works asynchronously, so it doesn't add any latency to your LLM requests, and you have…

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier. I built a tool to find the best and cheapest LLM models for my projects launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1
    LLM Stats▲293

    I was overspending on GPT-4o. It was really hard to compare different models I could switch to, so I built this LLM comparison tool. It shows leaderboards, pricing, and performance data across 100+ LLMs (including all major providers and open-source models). Key features: - Live pricing comparisons - Benchmark Scores (MMLU, HumanEval, GPQA, etc.) - Context length vs cost analysis - Speed/throughput tests across providers - Quality vs price visualizations - Open source (all data verifiable) Try it out: https://llmstats.com I'd like to know your opinion :) Tech stack: Next.js,…

    Oct 2025 · llm-stats.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Hi HN! We're Gabriel & Viraj, and we're excited to open source TensorZero. To be a little cheeky, TensorZero is an open-source platform that helps LLM applications graduate from API wrappers into defensible AI products. 1. Integrate our model gateway 2. Send metrics or feedback 3. Unlock compounding improvements in quality, cost, and latency It enables a data & learning flywheel for LLMs by unifying: • Inference: one API for all LLMs, with <1ms P99 overhead • Observability: inference & feedback → your database • Optimization: better prompts, models, inference strategies • Experimentation:…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3
    LLM Gatewayfree tier▲286

    I built an OpenAI-compatible LLM gateway that routes requests to OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, vLLM, llama-server, SGLang... anything that speaks &#x2F;v1&#x2F;chat&#x2F;completions. Single Go binary, one YAML config file, no infrastructure. It does the things you'd expect from this kind of gateway... semantic routing via a three-layer cascade (keyword heuristics, embedding similarity, LLM classifier) that picks the best model when clients omit the model field, weighted round-robin load balancing across local inference servers with health checks and failover. The part I think is most…

    2025 · llmgateway.io · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    LLMs price comparison tool developed and updated by LLM

    2024 · ailesson.io · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    Hey HN, We've been building a multi-model API for LLMs called OpenRouter since we launched the Window AI extension in April this year [0]. The events of the last week make it clear the LLM landscape is unpredictable, so LLM aggregators are picking up interest. Unlike others, we're making a router on top of a public, explorable dataset. We recently built a way to rank and visualize this data, including the token counts we see going to and from different models, both open-sourced (like Llama, Mistral, finetunes, and variants) and closed-sourced (OpenAI, Anthropic). The API supports - 50+…

    Apr 2026 · openrouter.ai · its alternatives →

  6. 6AT

    I recently built a small open-source tool to benchmark different LLM API endpoints — including OpenAI, Claude, and self-hosted models (like llama.cpp). It runs a configurable number of test requests and reports two key metrics: • First-token latency (ms): How long it takes for the first token to appear • Output speed (tokens&#x2F;sec): Overall output fluency Demo: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;llmapitest.com&#x2F; Code: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;qjr87&#x2F;llm-api-test The goal is to provide a simple, visual, and reproducible way to evaluate performance across different LLM providers, including…

    2025 · llmapitest.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7
    Trails▲81

    Hey all, Justin here. I previously built Phind, the AI search engine for developers. One of the biggest problems we had there was figuring out what went wrong with bad searches. We had tons of searches per day, but less than 1% of users gave any explicit feedback. So we were either manually digging through searches or making general system improvements and hoping they helped. This problem gets harder with agents. Traces are longer and more complex. It takes more effort to review them, so I'm building a tool that lets you analyze LLM outputs directly to help developers of LLM apps and agents…

    Jan 2026 · trails-red.vercel.app · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    I started leaning in on AI heavily this year, as I wanted to get more done autonomously, but then my token usage climbed dramatically to the point where my weekly quota would run out before the end of the week, sometimes a couple of days into the week. I realised I had to do something about it else I'd have to double my spend. So I decided to start tracking my cost per task type. This revealed that a lot of my spend went to searches&#x2F;scans or simple things like scouting tasks. I then decided to turn this into a simple CLI tool that can be used to read your OpenAI-style logs locally, and…

    Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    The LLM Evaluation Framework. Contribute to confident-ai/deepeval development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    I run a small AI lab and playground and got super excited about Anthropics paper "Verbalizable Representations Form a Global Workspace in Language Models" (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;transformer-circuits.pub&#x2F;2026&#x2F;workspace&#x2F;index.html) It talks about how they use a tool they call a Jacobian Lens to view inside the middle layers of LLM while it's working before it commits to a word (token). I wanted to see if I could get a version of this running on the open models and to my surprise it worked! I ran some experiments with it and build a public facing free tool anyone can use with your…

    Jul 2026 · lucid.earthpilot.ai · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    Hi HN, I was once given the advice: Don't waste expensive frontier model credits (GPT&#x2F;Claude&#x2F;etc.) on bulk work. Send the boring, repetitive, high-volume jobs to a smaller model, and save the expensive prompts for when you actually need frontier-level reasoning. I complained and told my manager that I shouldnt have to think about using certain models for certain coding tasks, and that one model should handle everything. Well, here we are anyway. If anyone needs a place to absolutely abuse an LLM with high-volume tasks, come beat ours up at https:&#x2F;&#x2F;yolo-auto.com. Here are…

    Jul 2026 · yolo-auto.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12TO

    I built TraceAIO, an open-source tool that prompts LLMs on your behalf and tells you whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini mention your brand — and which competitors and sources show up instead. Yeah, this category smells a bit like a grift, same as early SEO. And I think over time it will become just SEO again, and become about good content. The tool just helps you monitor over time. It queries the browser products through real browser sessions, not APIs, runs on Docker, with an MCP server so you can query your own data through an LLM. No business model, Apache 2.0, self hosted. If you…

    Jun 2026 · traceaio.org · its alternatives →

  13. 13GV

    Hey HN, I just updated my project that compares some LLMs. It uses your prompt for all the models and runs at the same time. You can see the results being generated in real-time and decide what's the best for your use case. I'm open to any suggestions and feedback. Thanks!

    2024 · geminivsgpt.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14
    AnyLLM▲20

    10+ LLMs at 10x speed. Think we're kidding. Test it now!

    2025 · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    I’ve spent the last 2.5 months building a product that runs LLM-powered code reviews on my pull requests — and I just launched it. The tool is built specifically for solo developers. You install it on your repo, trigger a scan by creating a pull request, and it leaves structured review comments using OpenAI under the hood. Funnily enough, I used the dev version of this app to review its own pull requests while building it. It helped me spot bugs, simplify structure, and keep quality high — all with minimal need for another human in the loop. Things I want to try out in the next months : -…

    2025 · codii.dev · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Last week I benchmarked my open-source Deep Research tool against ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. I caught OpenAI fabricating 4-5 citations that don't exist. Gemini reduced real hazard ratios by 30-40%. So I built ASK Mode: every answer gets automatically verified against a second round of sources. Each claim marked [OK], [??], or [NO]. - ~400 verified answers for $1 - 2-3 minutes per query - No RLHF nannying - it answers what you ask - Full verification report with every response The gap between chat (unverified, stale training data) and deep research (20+ minutes) needed filling.…

    Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17LR

    Hi! My OpenAI costs started going up recently and I hated how I couldn't figure out which model was costing me more? The OpenAI usage page (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;platform.openai.com&#x2F;account&#x2F;usage) gives a nice overall breakdown, but it doesn't go into detail about cost &#x2F; model, token usage, and # requests. So I reverse engineered their API to make a better dashboard, and then made it free to use. Try it out and let me know what you think. Also please tell me what other features you wish existed here https:&#x2F;&#x2F;platform.openai.com&#x2F;account&#x2F;usage but doesn't yet.

    2023 · llm.report · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    Hi hacker news, My name is Dillion and I'm the creator of llm.report. A few months ago, I was frustrated by the lack of observability into the OpenAI API. All of us are left in the dark about API performance, latency, cost calculation, cost breakdown, and more. I just wanted to know more about how my AI app is performing in production and make data-driven decisions to improve the product. So I ended up just building it myself. There are three parts to the platform: 1. OpenAI API Dashboard (no-code) - Enter your OpenAI key and get access to detailed insights straight from the OpenAI API…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    Hey HN, We’re excited to share PySpur, an open-source tool that provides a graph-based interface for building, debugging, and evaluating LLM workflows. Why we built this: Before this, we built several LLM-powered applications that collectively served thousands of users. The biggest challenge we faced was ensuring reliability: making sure the workflows were robust enough to handle edge cases and deliver consistent results. In practice, achieving this reliability meant repeatedly: 1. Breaking down complex goals into simpler steps: Composing prompts, tool calls, parsing steps, and branching…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    A few months ago I was working on a flight search engine that would include pet transport costs (I know a few by hearth but storing them and make the calculations in the UI would be nice) While I was collecting pet pricing from several airlines I strugled to extract data in a common format without hallucinated values. That's when I thought: What if I use multiple LLMs and take the most common response to improve accuracy? This idea became this new project. You provide your documents, an SQLModel schema, an LLM provider, plus what you'd like to extract and Extrai does the rest. Including…

    Nov 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Hey folks, I’m the creator of WFGY — a semantic reasoning framework for LLMs. After open-sourcing it, I did a full technical and value audit — and realized this engine might be worth $8M–$17M based on AI module licensing norms. If embedded as part of a platform core, the valuation could exceed $30M. Too late to pull it back. So here it is — fully free, open-sourced under MIT. --- ### What does it solve? Current LLMs (even GPT-4+) lack *self-consistent reasoning*. They struggle with: - Fragmented logic across turns - No internal loopback or self-calibration - No modular thought units - Weak…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    I’ve been building LLM tooling for a small VC fund and found myself explaining the same mental model over and over to non-technical people around me: how a stateless LLM becomes a chatbot, how tool use works, what an agent is mechanically, and why context windows shape all of it. I never found a guide that covered that full chain at the level I wanted, so I wrote one. It’s nine short chapters, each building on the last. Deliberately simplified: the goal is a useful mental model, not a textbook. Feedback, corrections, and contributions welcome: github.com&#x2F;ymyke&#x2F;aiaiai

    Apr 2026 · aiaiai.guide · its alternatives →

  23. 23WW

    Hey all! @sridatta and I wrote a book&#x2F;zine called Forest Friends on system evals for LLM-driven apps. But it's a bit more whimsical, a bit more visual, and very much inspired by the meme of LLMs being a shoggoth polished into a smiley face with RLHF. LLM system evals are important as companies move past the flashy AI demos to reliable production apps. System evals keep coming up as the answer for what you "should do", but it's not exactly a standard part of the software engineering toolkit. So we pulled from @sridatta's seven years as a research engineer at Google, plus a ton of best…

    2024 · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Hey HN, I built browser-use, an open-source alternative to OpenAI’s Operator for browser-use systems, and here’s why I think it’s better: Flexibility: You can use any LLM with our tool – Gemini, Anthropic, Qwen, Llama, DeepSeek, and more. As new models improve, so does your agent. Open Source: No need to pay $200&#x2F;month or endure long waitlists – it’s free and accessible to everyone today. Custom Automation: Our Python package allows you to build actual web automations. Your LLM can gain new tools, like file uploads. Cost: Our system is 30x cheaper than Operator, e.g., when used with…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →