ServerlessAI – Build, scale, and monetize AI apps without back end
Hello HN, I’ve always loved building frontend-only apps—those you can prototype over a weekend, host for free on GitHub Pages, and scale to millions of users. Unfortunately, AI-enabled apps complicate things, as exposing your OpenAI key to the world is obviously a no-go. This also means mobile developers often have to run their own servers. That’s why I built ServerlessAI, an API gateway that lets you securely call multiple AI providers directly from client side using OpenAI-compatible APIs. You can authenticate users through any identity provider, like Google or Apple, and set per-user…
In plain words
ServerlessAI is an API gateway that enables developers to build AI-powered applications without requiring backend infrastructure. It securely routes requests to multiple AI providers directly from client-side code using OpenAI-compatible APIs, eliminating the need to expose API keys. The platform supports user authentication through providers like Google and Apple, includes per-user quotas and spending limits, and allows endpoint and model allowlisting. Developers can monetize apps by setting different quota tiers for various user levels, making it suitable for frontend developers and mobile app creators.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hello HN, I’ve always loved building frontend-only apps—those you can prototype over a weekend, host for free on GitHub Pages, and scale to millions of users. Unfortunately, AI-enabled apps complicate things, as exposing your OpenAI key to the world is obviously a no-go. This also means mobile developers often have to run their own servers. That’s why I built ServerlessAI, an API gateway that lets you securely call multiple AI providers directly from client side using OpenAI-compatible APIs. You can authenticate users through any identity provider, like Google or Apple, and set per-user request or spending quotas. You can also define an allowlist for endpoints and models. To monetize, you can apply different quotas for various user tiers. To start, I recommend checking out our tutorials, where we walk you through building a complete, deployment-ready AI app in 5 minutes. We’ve got tutorials for React, Next.js, and iOS: https://serverlessai.dev/docs/tutorials/ Our long term vision is to offer the best toolkit for AI developers at every stage of their project’s lifecycle. If OpenAI / Anthropic / etc are AWS, we want to be the Supabase / Upstash / etc. We are building optional out-of-box tools for authentication and payment management, so you can roll out your prototype faster. In the future, we want to provide the best prompt engineering tools for fine-tuning, A/B testing, and backtesting, as well as the best observability tools. We’d love to hear your feedback. Thanks for stopping by!
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