Switching providers later is painful, so evaluate up front. Beyond the obvious — does it serve the model you want — these are the checks that separate a production-grade provider from a demo.
Uptime and latency
Look for a public status page with real uptime and latency history, not just a green badge. Run a burst of requests from your own region and measure p95 latency during your peak hours.
Pricing transparency
Per-1M-token pricing should be clear and stable, with no surprise markup on cache misses or hidden minimums. Compare input and output prices separately — output is usually the larger share of cost.
Model catalog and variants
A good provider exposes the same model at different quality/cost tiers, so you can route simple tasks to a cheap variant and hard ones to a flagship. Confirm you can switch with a single parameter.
Compatibility
OpenAI-compatible endpoints mean you keep your existing SDK and tooling. Verify streaming, function calling and embeddings all work before you depend on them.
Support and billing
Check how you can reach support, and how you can pay — a card option plus crypto covers most teams. Try a small top-up and a refund scenario before going all in.
GetVibe API covers these bases: one OpenAI-compatible endpoint, live USD pricing, and a public status page. Create a key and run your own evaluation in minutes.