Direct routes keep each provider relationship separate. AIWave puts the account, USD balance, request contract, and billing record behind one route. Neither path removes the need to test the model with your workload.
The useful difference is the operating work around each request.
Account, billing, client, evidence, recoveryOpen, fund, and review each provider account.
Store credentials and follow each billing surface.
Maintain the client details required by each route.
Join request evidence across separate consoles.
Own recovery behavior for every provider boundary.
Fund one USD balance and review one account surface.
Keep one OpenAI-compatible client for supported requests.
Pin the tested model ID when the workload changes.
Read model, token classes, status, group, and charge together.
Keep application-level timeout, retry, and acceptance rules.
AIWave reduces repeated provider administration. It does not guarantee upstream availability, model quality, or workload acceptance.
The configuration checked 2026-09-13 reports default ×1 and VIP ×0.9. Listed rates use default billing. Select VIP when you create an API key to pay 10% less.
Group math checked 2026-09-13These are dated gateway price rows, not quality scores or permanent recommendations. Run the payload and record errors and output acceptance yourself.
AIWave rate rows · see per-row effective dates| Model ID | Provider | Input | Cache Hit | Output |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| deepseek-v4-flash | DeepSeek | $0.638 | $0.0202884 | $1.914 |
| glm-5.1 | GLM | $2.1 | $0.680001 | $6.6 |
| kimi-k3 | Kimi | $4.5 | $0.9 | $22.5 |
| ernie-5.0 | ERNIE | $2.46575 | $0.2465754 | $9.31513 |
| MiniMax-M3 | MiniMax | $0.90608 | $0.181216 | $3.62432 |
| qwen3.8-max | Qwen | $2.67805 | Not listed | $8.03416 |
| doubao-seed-2-1-pro-260628 | Doubao | $1.33903 | Not listed | $6.69513 |
| step-3.7-flash | StepFun | $0.4 | $0.08 | $2.4 |
| xiaomi/mimo-v2.5-pro | MiMo | $1.5622 | Not listed | $4.68659 |