LLM Proxy

LLM Proxy Gateway

Acceptable use. Hosted-instance traffic is governed by the Terms of Service — including a generative-content acceptable-use policy — and by the upstream model providers' usage policies. Wallets used for prohibited content are blocked before settlement. Outputs are generated by third-party models from your inputs; you are responsible for how you use them.

Looking for the OpenAI-compatible wire paths? The LLM Gateway (OpenAI /v1) serves standard chat/completions and embeddings at https://agent402.tools/v1 — six tiers from $0.002, model-optional auto-routing, streaming, and response caching. Any OpenAI SDK adopts it by changing base_url. The /api/llm* tools below remain available as the simpler custom-JSON proxy.

Three tiers of OpenAI inference, paywalled via x402. An agent sends a standard chat/completions request and pays per call with USDC on Base, Solana, Polygon, Arbitrum, Monad, Celo, Stellar, or Algorand -- no OpenAI API key needed on the caller's side, no signup, no account. The operator's own OPENAI_API_KEY handles upstream auth; per-tier input and output caps keep worst-case upstream cost well below the x402 price.

Tiers

Endpoint	Price	Models	Input cap	Output cap
POST /api/llm	$0.01	gpt-4o-mini	16k chars	4,096 tokens
POST /api/llm-pro	$0.10	gpt-4o, gpt-4.1	16k chars	2,048 tokens
POST /api/llm-premium	$0.50	o3-mini (reasoning)	32k chars	2,048 tokens

All three tiers are wallet-only -- there is no proof-of-work free tier because every call burns real upstream inference credit. See Security Model for the wallet-only rationale.

Request format

Every tier accepts the same OpenAI-shaped JSON body:

{
  "model": "gpt-4o-mini",
  "messages": [
    { "role": "system", "content": "You are a concise assistant." },
    { "role": "user", "content": "Summarize x402 in two sentences." }
  ],
  "max_tokens": 256,
  "temperature": 0.7,
  "top_p": 1,
  "stop": "\n"
}

Field	Required	Notes
model	yes	Must match the tier (e.g. gpt-4o-mini for /api/llm)
messages	yes	Array of {role, content} objects; max 50 messages
max_tokens	no	Default 1,024; silently clamped to the tier's output cap
temperature	no	0--2; controls randomness
top_p	no	0--1; nucleus sampling
stop	no	Stop sequence(s)

Response format

Every tier returns the same OpenAI-shaped envelope:

{
  "model": "gpt-4o-mini-2025-07-18",
  "provider": "openai",
  "usage": {
    "prompt_tokens": 24,
    "completion_tokens": 31,
    "total_tokens": 55
  },
  "choices": [
    {
      "message": {
        "role": "assistant",
        "content": "x402 is an open HTTP payment standard that uses the 402 status code to let servers charge per request, settled on-chain in USDC. Buyers need only a wallet -- no API key, no account."
      },
      "finish_reason": "stop"
    }
  ]
}

Curl examples

Basic tier ($0.01 -- GPT-4o-mini)

curl -X POST https://agent402.tools/api/llm \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "model": "gpt-4o-mini",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Say hello in one sentence."}],
    "max_tokens": 64
  }'

Pro tier ($0.10 -- GPT-4o / GPT-4.1)

curl -X POST https://agent402.tools/api/llm-pro \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "model": "gpt-4o",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Explain proof-of-work in three sentences."}],
    "max_tokens": 256
  }'

Premium tier ($0.50 -- o3-mini reasoning)

curl -X POST https://agent402.tools/api/llm-premium \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "model": "o3-mini",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "What are the trade-offs of on-chain vs off-chain settlement?"}],
    "max_tokens": 512
  }'

All three return 402 without a valid x402 payment header -- the same flow as every other paid tool. See Paying with x402 for how to sign and attach payment.

Operator caps that protect margins

The per-tier caps are set so that the worst-case upstream OpenAI cost stays comfortably below the x402 price charged to the caller:

• Input cap (chars) limits how much prompt text the caller can send, bounding prompt-token cost.
• Output cap (tokens) hard-limits max_completion_tokens sent to OpenAI, bounding completion-token cost.
• Model allowlist per tier prevents a caller from requesting a more expensive model than the tier's price covers (e.g. sending gpt-4o to the $0.01 endpoint returns 400).
• Message count is capped at 50 per request.

These caps are enforced server-side before the upstream call is made -- a misconfigured client cannot cause the operator to lose money.

Environment gating

The kit reads OPENAI_API_KEY at call time, not at boot. If the key is missing or empty, calls return 503 Service Unavailable and the rest of the server continues running normally. Self-hosters who don't want to offer LLM proxy simply omit the env var -- no code change needed.

See also

• Paying with x402 -- the USDC payment flow these endpoints require
• Security Model -- why these tools are wallet-only (no PoW free tier)
• API Reference -- full HTTP endpoint reference
• Tool Catalog -- where these three tools sit in the 500+ tool catalog