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API Documentation

CheapTokens.ai sells discounted Venice.ai API credits with transparent Same-Day time-based pricing. You get a real Venice INFERENCE API key and call Venice's API directly. Full Venice API docs at docs.venice.ai.

How It Works

CheapTokens.ai sells discounted Venice.ai API credits using Same-Day UTC time-decay pricing. When you purchase credits, we generate a real Venice INFERENCE API key for you via Venice's key management API. You then call Venice's API directly — we are not a proxy.

Flow

Choose Same-Day Credits or a Prepaid API Key
Pay with Base USDC for the best price, or use card checkout when available. Card checkout has a $5 minimum, and credit card fees apply.
Receive a Venice API key with your credit usage limit
Call the Venice API at api.venice.ai/api/v1
Same-Day Credits expire at midnight UTC. Prepaid API Keys keep working while prepaid balance can fund the next daily credit reserve.

Products

Same-Day Credits

Same-Day Credits are the cheapest credits for work today. They expire at midnight UTC, along with the temporary API key.

Prepaid API Key

Prepaid API Key gives you one reusable key with a prepaid balance and a daily credit reserve. The daily credit reserve is deducted from your prepaid balance each UTC day. Unused reserved credits expire at midnight UTC.

Authentication

Use the Venice API key you received from CheapTokens.ai in the Authorization header as a Bearer token.

Header
Authorization: Bearer your_venice_key

Your key has a credit usage limit set by your purchase. Venice tracks usage automatically. Same-Day Credits expire at midnight UTC; Prepaid API Keys keep working while prepaid balance can fund the next daily credit reserve.

Base URL

Your key works directly with Venice's API. Use their OpenAI-compatible endpoint:

https://api.venice.ai/api/v1

If you are using the OpenAI SDK, set the base_url (Python) or baseURL (Node.js) configuration option. See the full Venice API docs for all available parameters.

Python
from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    api_key="your_venice_key",
    base_url="https://api.venice.ai/api/v1"
)

Node.js
import OpenAI from 'openai';

const client = new OpenAI({
  apiKey: 'your_venice_key',
  baseURL: 'https://api.venice.ai/api/v1',
});

Chat Completions

Create a chat completion. The request format is identical to the OpenAI Chat Completions API.

cURL
curl https://api.venice.ai/api/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer your_venice_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "venice-model-id-from-/models",
    "messages": [
      {"role": "system", "content": "You are a helpful assistant."},
      {"role": "user", "content": "What is the capital of France?"}
    ],
    "max_tokens": 256,
    "venice_parameters": {"disable_thinking": true}
  }'

Response
{
  "id": "chatcmpl-abc123",
  "object": "chat.completion",
  "model": "venice-model-id-from-/models",
  "choices": [
    {
      "index": 0,
      "message": {
        "role": "assistant",
        "content": "The capital of France is Paris."
      },
      "finish_reason": "stop"
    }
  ],
  "usage": {
    "prompt_tokens": 25,
    "completion_tokens": 8,
    "total_tokens": 33
  }
}

Models

Venice offers a variety of open-source and proprietary models. Use the models endpoint to list available options.

Request
GET https://api.venice.ai/api/v1/models
Authorization: Bearer your_venice_key

Available models change over time. Use GET /models to fetch the live catalog instead of hardcoding IDs in your app. See the full list at docs.venice.ai.

Account & Recovery

The Account page supports three lookup modes:

Email — card buyers enter the Stripe receipt or Stripe Link checkout email. CheapTokens sends a private one-time account link and does not reveal whether an email has purchases from the public form.
API key — paste a key or suffix to inspect limited public status.
Wallet — wallet buyers connect and sign to list purchases, reveal full keys, reissue eligible keys, and top up supported Prepaid API Keys.

Full API keys are bearer credentials. CheapTokens only reveals full card-purchased keys after the buyer claims a private one-time email link, and only reveals wallet-purchased keys after wallet signature verification.

Account URL
https://cheaptokens.ai/status
https://cheaptokens.ai/status?tab=email
https://cheaptokens.ai/status?tab=wallet

Playground

Use Playground to test a CheapTokens/Venice key in the browser against Venice chat, image, text-to-speech, video, and music APIs. The Video tab supports text, image, source-video, and reference-image model inputs. The Playground proxies requests server-side using the user-provided bearer key. It stores keys in browser session storage by default; local browser persistence only happens when the user chooses to remember the key.

Image generation keeps Safe mode on. The UI shows it checked and disabled, sample snippets include safe_mode: true, and the server forwards safe_mode: true to Venice even if a crafted request tries to disable it. Uploaded and generated media is temporary test data, not durable project storage.

Security & Audits

The underlying credit supply and relay flow has an independent security review available. The public product sells Venice.ai API credits; this audit covers part of the backing infrastructure.

DIEM Relay Security Review v1.0

Auditor: Bretzel
Date: 2026-03-13
Findings: 0 critical, 0 high, 1 medium, 1 low, 4 informational

Notable items in this review include one medium-severity operational issue, one low-severity accounting/dust issue, and several hardening recommendations. Customer-facing CheapTokens keys remain direct Venice API keys, not a CheapTokens proxy.

Read the audit PDF

Streaming

Set "stream": true to receive responses as Server-Sent Events (SSE).

cURL Example
curl https://api.venice.ai/api/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer your_venice_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "venice-model-id-from-/models",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}],
    "stream": true,
    "venice_parameters": {"disable_thinking": true}
  }'

Rate Limits

Rate limits are managed by Venice based on your API key type. Your key has a credit usage limit set at purchase time.

Limit	Details
Credit usage	Per your purchase
Key expiry	Same-Day keys expire at midnight UTC. Prepaid API Keys remain reusable while prepaid balance funds each UTC daily reserve.
Request limits	Set by Venice

Error Codes

Venice uses standard HTTP status codes. Error responses include a JSON body with details.

Code	Description
401	Invalid, expired, or revoked API key
402	Insufficient credits / payment required
403	Not entitled / forbidden model or feature
429	Rate limit exceeded
500	Internal server error

Next: Getting Started →

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