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Quick answer: The Venice API is a pay-as-you-go, OpenAI-compatible API — no subscription required. You point your existing OpenAI client at https://api.venice.ai/api/v1, pass a Venice API key, and pay per token, per image, or per audio second depending on the model and modality. Text prices span an enormous range: from $0.07 per million input tokens for the open GPT OSS 120B model to $5 per million for Meta’s frontier Muse Wonder. New accounts include a free daily allowance and 500 welcome credits, and prepaid credits do not expire. Prices below were checked against Venice’s own model pages and API pricing documentation on October 31, 2026 — but Venice’s catalog changes often, so verify the live pricing page before you build on any single rate.
Verdict: The Cheapest Way to Get Private, Multi-Model Inference — If You Read the Model Labels
Best for: developers who want one API key for many models, privacy-minded apps that need zero-retention or hardware-backed inference, and teams migrating off OpenAI who want to keep their existing client code.
Not for: developers who want one fixed price for everything, anyone who assumes “private” means the same thing on every model, or teams that need a guaranteed latency or uptime benchmark — Venice publishes prices, not an independent performance SLA.
Bottom line: Venice’s API is genuinely competitive on price, especially at the open-model end, and its privacy story is real but model-dependent. The two mistakes to avoid are budgeting from a single headline rate and assuming every model in the catalog carries the same privacy guarantee. Pick the model, check its privacy label, then check its price.
Try Venice — free tier, no credit card required →
How the Venice API Works in 60 Seconds
Venice’s API is OpenAI-compatible for text chat. In practice that means three things stay the same when you migrate: the request shape, the Bearer-token authentication, and (mostly) the SDK. What changes is the base URL and the model ID.
curl https://api.venice.ai/api/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $VENICE_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"model": "zai-org-glm-5",
"messages": [
{"role": "user", "content": "Give me three practical uses for a private inference API."}
]
}'
Or with the OpenAI Python SDK, changing only the key and the base URL:
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(
api_key="YOUR_VENICE_API_KEY",
base_url="https://api.venice.ai/api/v1",
)
response = client.chat.completions.create(
model="zai-org-glm-5",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "What should I log when building an AI agent?"}],
)
print(response.choices[0].message.content)
Compatibility has limits worth knowing before you migrate. Venice’s own documentation notes that tool calling, vision, reasoning controls, file inputs, and Venice-specific features (such as web search via venice_parameters) depend on the selected model and endpoint — OpenAI compatibility lowers migration cost, it does not make every model behave identically. One documented migration detail: max_tokens is deprecated in favor of max_completion_tokens. And do not hard-code a model ID from an old tutorial: the catalog changes, so check the current /models response or Venice’s model directory first.
Text Pricing: Per-Token Rates by Model (Checked October 31, 2026)
Text chat is priced per 1 million tokens. “Input” is what you send; “output” is what the model generates; “cached input” is the discounted rate for repeated context. All rates below are in US dollars, from Venice’s own model pages and API pricing documentation.
| Model on Venice | Input / 1M tokens | Output / 1M tokens | Cached input / 1M | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT OSS 120B (open weights) | $0.07 | $0.30 | — | High-volume, low-cost workloads |
| Mercury 3 (launch discount; list $0.20 / $0.70) | $0.10 | $0.35 | $0.01 | Fast agents, 1M context, 1,000+ tokens/sec |
| MiniMax M3.1 Flash | $0.19 | $0.75 | $0.02 | Agentic coding at Flash-tier cost |
| Grok 4.20 (xAI flagship, 2M context) | $1.42 | $2.83 | $0.23 | Long-context reasoning |
| GPT-6.1 Sol (OpenAI, 1,050K context) | $2.00 | $10.00 | $0.10 | Complex coding and agentic workflows |
| Claude Sonnet 5 | $3.00 | $15.00 | — | Top-tier coding and writing |
| Muse Wonder (Meta frontier) | $5.00 | $25.00 | $0.25 | Frontier agentic work |
Two cautions on this table. First, some models add context-length surcharges for very long prompts — Grok 4.20, for example, charges higher rates for prompts of 200K tokens or more — so a long-context workload can cost more than the headline rate suggests. Second, Mercury 3’s $0.10 / $0.35 rates are a launch discount with no stated end date; budget for the $0.20 / $0.70 list rates if you build around it long-term.
What That Actually Costs: Simple Arithmetic
The tables below are plain arithmetic on the rates above — not measured benchmarks — so you can sanity-check your own workload. A “turn” here means 1,000 input tokens and 500 output tokens, roughly a short question and a medium-length answer.
| Model | Cost per turn (1K in / 500 out) | Turns per $1 | Cost per 1M in + 1M out |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPT OSS 120B | $0.00022 | ~4,500 | $0.37 |
| Mercury 3 (launch) | $0.00028 | ~3,600 | $0.45 |
| MiniMax M3.1 Flash | $0.00057 | ~1,770 | $0.94 |
| Grok 4.20 | $0.00284 | ~353 | $4.25 |
| GPT-6.1 Sol | $0.00700 | ~143 | $12.00 |
| Claude Sonnet 5 | $0.01050 | ~95 | $18.00 |
| Muse Wonder | $0.01750 | ~57 | $30.00 |
The spread is the story: a high-volume classification or summarization job on GPT OSS 120B costs roughly 80 times less per million tokens than the same token count on Muse Wonder. That is why model selection, not the API itself, is where most Venice bills are won or lost. A cheap model that needs three retries can cost more than a frontier model that gets it right once — test accuracy per dollar on your own prompts, not just price per token.
Beyond Text: Image, Audio, Video, Embeddings, and Web Tools
Venice is a multimodal API, but each modality bills in its own unit. Comparing a “cost per request” across modalities is meaningless without the workload definition.
| Modality | Example from Venice’s pricing | Billing unit |
|---|---|---|
| Embeddings | text-embedding-bge-en-icl — $0.01 | Per 1M tokens |
| Image generation | Anime (WAI) — $0.01 | Per image (one image per request on the compatible endpoint; resolution and editing inputs can change the price) |
| Text-to-speech | Kokoro TTS — $3.50 | Per 1M characters |
| Speech-to-text | Parakeet ASR — $0.0001 | Per second of audio |
| Video | Model-, resolution-, and duration-dependent | Per job — use the video quote endpoint before queuing |
| Web tools | Search and scraping from chat workflows | Separate usage fees, on top of token charges |
Video deserves a special note because it is not a single request. The typical Venice video workflow is asynchronous: optionally call the video quote endpoint for an estimate, submit the job to the video queue, save the returned queue ID, poll the retrieve endpoint until the task completes, then download from a temporary delivery URL. A successful queue response means the job entered the queue — not that the video is ready. Your code should distinguish submitted, processing, completed, failed, client-timeout, and downloaded states.
How You Pay: Credits, DIEM, and x402
Venice offers three funding paths for the API, and they suit different workloads:
- Prepaid credits (USD or crypto). Buy credits that work across endpoints. According to Venice’s API overview, these credits do not expire. New accounts include a free daily allowance and 500 welcome credits, with no credit card required. This is the simplest path for most developers.
- DIEM staking. Stake DIEM and receive a daily allowance: one staked DIEM equals $1 of Venice credit per day while it remains staked. Unused daily allowance does not roll over, and it refreshes at 00:00 UTC. DIEM suits predictable daily agent workloads — but it is not free compute, since you must acquire or stake the asset, and if a request exceeds the remaining allowance with no other balance covering it, the API can return a
402 INSUFFICIENT_BALANCEerror. - x402 (wallet-funded, pay-per-request). Pay per request with USDC on Base, without a conventional API key. This avoids key management but adds wallet and payment-flow requirements.
One clarification that trips people up: the API is pay-as-you-go and does not require a subscription. Venice’s consumer app plans — Free ($0), Pro ($18/month), Pro+ ($68/month), Max ($200/month), re-verified October 30, 2026 — are a separate product from API billing. You do not need a Pro subscription to call the API; you fund credits (or stake DIEM, or use x402) and pay for what you use. Full app-plan breakdown in our Is Venice AI Free? guide.
Privacy Pricing: Four Modes, Not One Promise
Privacy is the main reason developers look at Venice — but “private” is not a single technical state, and the mode you get depends on the model you pick. Venice’s API documentation describes a shared proxy and four runtime modes:
| Mode | What it protects | What it does not mean |
|---|---|---|
| Anonymized | Hides your Venice identity from the upstream provider | The provider may still see prompt content |
| Private | Contract-enforced zero retention of prompt and response content after inference | It does not erase operational metadata needed for billing and abuse prevention |
| TEE | Runs supported models in a hardware-isolated enclave | Only supported models can use it |
| E2EE | Encrypts prompts client-side so only a verified enclave decrypts them | Requires attestation, special headers, and a narrower feature set; some web search, memory, and tool flows are limited |
Practical advice: check model_spec.privacy in the model catalog before you commit — it tells you whether a model is baseline anonymized or private, and capability flags indicate TEE and E2EE support. Venice may still process operational metadata (account or wallet identifiers, key identifiers, timestamps, token counts, billing amounts, request IDs, IP address) even when prompt content is not retained. That distinction matters for compliance reviews. We assessed the consumer side in depth in our Is Venice AI Safe? guide.
Is the Venice API Uncensored?
Honestly: partly, and it depends on the model. Venice’s catalog includes open-weight models with minimal filtering, which is why uncensored use cases are a real API use case — but “uncensored” is a property of the model you choose, not of the API as a whole. Frontier third-party models served through Venice carry their own providers’ behaviors, and the image endpoint’s moderation field changes how adult content is handled rather than removing all restrictions. Do not present any API as a blanket promise that every model or use case is unrestricted: check the model’s own description and privacy spec, and test your actual prompts before promising anything to your users. Our hands-on testing of Venice’s consumer chat (0 refusals on 4 test prompts in October 2026) is covered in our full Venice review — this pricing article itself is research-based, not a live API test, and makes no hands-on API claim.
Getting Started, Step by Step
- Create a Venice account. Sign up free — no credit card required — and confirm the free daily allowance and 500 welcome credits on your account.
- Create an API key. Generate a key in your Venice account and store it as an environment variable (for example,
VENICE_API_KEY), never hard-coded in source. - Point your client at Venice. Set the base URL to
https://api.venice.ai/api/v1in your existing OpenAI client or SDK. - Pick a model ID from the live catalog. Check the current
/modelsresponse or Venice’s model directory — IDs change as models are added and retired. - Check the model’s privacy label and price. Confirm the privacy mode and per-token rate for your workload before sending production traffic.
- Send a test request and watch the bill. Start with a cheap open model, confirm the response shape and token counts, then scale to frontier models only where accuracy justifies the price.
New to Venice itself? Start with our What Is Venice AI? beginner explainer and How to Use Venice AI walkthrough. Current offers are in our Venice promo code guide (referral program: Give $10, Get $10).
Honest Limitations Developers Should Know
- Catalog churn is real. Models, IDs, and prices change. Any cost estimate in any article — including this one — has a shelf life. Re-check the pricing page before you budget.
- OpenAI compatibility is not identity. Parameters, tool behavior, vision support, and reasoning controls vary by model. Budget integration-testing time, not just token spend.
- Context surcharges and modality fees hide in the fine print. Long prompts, video jobs, and web tools can all cost more than the headline text rate.
- No independent latency or uptime benchmark exists. Public documentation does not establish one. Measure latency, success rate, and retry cost in your own workload before moving a production agent.
- Privacy’s strongest modes cost engineering effort. E2EE requires client-side encryption, attestation, and special headers, and it narrows the feature set. Treat it as an architecture decision, not a toggle.
FAQ
Is the Venice API free?
There is no subscription fee, and new accounts include a free daily allowance plus 500 welcome credits with no credit card required. Beyond that allowance, you pay per token (or per image, per character, or per second, depending on modality). It is pay-as-you-go, not free at scale.
Do I need a Venice Pro subscription to use the API?
No. The API is billed separately from the consumer app plans (Free $0, Pro $18/month, Pro+ $68/month, Max $200/month). You fund API credits, stake DIEM, or use x402 — a Pro subscription is not a prerequisite for API access.
Is the Venice API OpenAI-compatible?
Yes for text chat: point your OpenAI client at https://api.venice.ai/api/v1, authenticate with a Bearer key, and send standard chat-completion requests. Compatibility is model- and feature-dependent, so verify tool calling, vision, and reasoning controls for the model you pick.
How much does the Venice API cost per month?
It depends entirely on your model and volume. As arithmetic on October 31, 2026 rates: 1 million input tokens plus 1 million output tokens costs $0.37 on GPT OSS 120B, $0.94 on MiniMax M3.1 Flash, $4.25 on Grok 4.20, $12 on GPT-6.1 Sol, $18 on Claude Sonnet 5, and $30 on Muse Wonder — before any context surcharges, image, audio, video, or web-tool fees.
Is the Venice API uncensored?
It depends on the model. Venice’s catalog includes open-weight models with minimal filtering, but frontier third-party models carry their own behaviors, and image moderation settings vary. Check the specific model’s description and test your prompts — no API-wide “unrestricted” promise applies.
How do Venice API credits work?
Prepaid credits work across endpoints and, per Venice’s API overview, do not expire. You can also fund usage by staking DIEM (daily allowance, refreshing 00:00 UTC, no rollover) or by paying per request with USDC on Base via x402.
What happens if my balance runs out?
Requests can fail with a 402 INSUFFICIENT_BALANCE error when no balance covers them — for example, when a DIEM daily allowance is exhausted and no credit balance remains. Top up credits or adjust the workload before retrying.
Can I use Venice API models in my existing OpenAI code?
In most cases, yes: change the base URL to https://api.venice.ai/api/v1, swap in your Venice key, and pass a Venice model ID. Then re-test — model support for tools, vision, structured outputs, and Venice-specific parameters varies, and max_tokens is deprecated in favor of max_completion_tokens.