CheapAI

Documentation

Everything you need to plug CheapAI into your tooling — setup guides for popular agents, API reference, FAQ.

Cline / Roo

VS Code coding agent

Same vision caveat as Kilo Code — images are not forwarded to custom providers.

Create an API key — Keys page → click Create key, name it (e.g. cline), copy the value.

Install Cline or Roo Code from the VS Code marketplace. Press ⌘⇧X (Windows/Linux Ctrl⇧X), search the extension name and click Install.

Open the extension panel (sidebar icon) → click the gear ⚙ in the panel header — Settings open.

In the API Provider dropdown select OpenAI Compatible.

Fill the three fields:

Base URL — behind a CDN
https://cheapai.io/v1
Base URL — no CDN
https://api.cheapai.io/v1
API Key
YOUR_API_KEY
Model
claude-sonnet-4-6

Cline only: click Verify in the settings — it will ping our endpoint and show a green check if the key works. Roo Code doesn't have this button — go straight to step 7 and verify by asking a question.

Save the settings → open the chat tab in the extension panel → ask a simple question (e.g. «list files here»). A streaming response within seconds means the integration works.

401 → wrong API key. 404 on model → wrong Model. For other errors check Logs.

Replace YOUR_API_KEY with a real key from the Keys section.