A command-line tool to compare pricing across 18 AI models from 6 providers, recommend the cheapest options for specific use cases, and track API spend.
Install & Download
1. ClawHub CLI
The fastest way to install a skill directly from the registry.
npx clawhub@latest install api-cost-compare
2. Manual Installation
Copy the skill folder to one of these locations
~/.openclaw/skills/ <project>/skills/ Priority: Workspace > Local > Bundled
3. Prompt Installation
Copy this prompt to OpenClaw to install it automatically.
Help me install api-cost-compare using Clawhub. If Clawhub is not installed, install it first (npm i -g clawhub).
Prefer to download?
Get the raw skill files in a ZIP archive.
What is api-cost-compare?
api-cost-compare is an essential CLI tool built to solve a major pain point for developers building AI applications: rapidly changing model costs. Relying on default models like Claude Opus or GPT-4o without evaluation can lead to overpaying by up to 90%, draining thousands of dollars annually. This utility is a vital resource among Openclaw Skills, allowing users to make informed, data-driven decisions on model integration based on actual financial metrics.
By analyzing 18 models across 6 industry-leading providers—OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek, xAI, and Mistral—the tool provides instant recommendations tailored to specific workflows. It simplifies budgeting by estimating token costs for tasks such as coding, reasoning, copywriting, and chatbot conversations, ensuring you pay only for what you need.
api-cost-compare Use Cases
- Optimizing model selection: Find the most cost-effective model for specific application workloads such as coding assistance or chat agents.
- Estimating monthly API expenses: Project costs before deploying an AI-powered feature to production based on custom input/output tokens.
- Auditing API spend: Track daily model usage costs directly from the terminal to prevent unexpected billing overruns.
- Evaluating model switches: Perform head-to-head pricing comparisons to see how much money is saved by migrating to alternative models.
How api-cost-compare Works
- Analyze Scenarios: Select from pre-configured usage profiles (coding, chat, writing, reasoning) with built-in token distributions.
- Query Prices: Scan the integrated pricing tables of 18 different LLMs from 6 providers.
- Calculate Savings: Generate formatted recommendations detailing exactly how much money is saved compared to standard expensive models.
- Log Expenses: Track expenses in real-time by logging consumption and rendering spending summaries via the built-in tracking commands.
api-cost-compare Setup
Installation
Install the package directly from GitHub using pip:
pip install git+https://github.com/minirr890112-byte/api-cost-compare.git
Commands
# List all 18 supported models with their base pricing
api-cost list
# Get a recommendation for a specific use case (e.g., coding)
api-cost recommend coding
# Compare two models head-to-head for a scenario
api-cost compare 0 1 chat
# Log spending for tracking
api-cost track 3.50 openai gpt-4o
# View your spending report summary
api-cost report
api-cost-compare Data Schema & Taxonomy
Supported Scenarios
The tool categorizes usage patterns into the following default profiles:
| Scenario | Input Tokens | Output Tokens | Requests / Day |
|---|---|---|---|
| coding | 5,000 | 2,000 | 50 |
| chat | 500 | 500 | 100 |
| writing | 1,000 | 3,000 | 10 |
| reasoning | 2,000 | 4,000 | 20 |
Supported Providers
- OpenAI
- Anthropic
- DeepSeek
- xAI
- Mistral
api-cost-compare Advanced Features
- Interactive Use Case Recommendations: Dynamically evaluates coding, writing, reasoning, and chat scenarios to recommend the most cost-effective models.
- Head-to-Head Pricing Simulator: Directly compares any two model indices for localized cost breakdowns under specified workloads.
- Integrated Expense Logging: Native CLI tracking system allows you to build historical reports of your actual API spend over time without leaving the terminal.
SKILL.md
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