Finest vs Requesty
Last updated 2026-08-19
Requesty is a managed LLM router: one API in front of hundreds of models, with smart routing, caching, and failover aimed at reliability and lower cost. Finest shares the drop-in shape but inverts the trust model: your requested model is the default, a cheaper configuration serves only where a sealed, published evidence bar authorizes it for that task class, and the fee is 25% of savings proven on the receipt. Routers ask you to trust the routing. Finest ships the evidence and prices itself from it.
| At a glance | Finest | Requesty |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Evidence-bound optimization gateway | Managed multi-model router |
| Default behavior | Your requested model, served verbatim, unless sealed evidence authorizes better. | Router selects among configured models |
| Fee model | No model markup. 25% of proven savings per request. No saving, no fee. | Usage-based platform pricing |
| Quality control | Pre-registered bars, validator escalation | Router heuristics and your configuration |
| Proof of value | A receipt per request: model served, evidence, saving. | Analytics dashboard |
| API shape | OpenAI-compatible and Anthropic-compatible | OpenAI-compatible |
Choose Finest when
- You want each substitution to trace to a published evidence record, not to router judgment.
- You want the worst case to be exactly what you asked for at list price, with no fee.
- You want a per-request counterfactual: what this would have cost pinned to your model, and what it cost instead.
Choose Requesty when
- You want one endpoint over a very wide catalog with built-in caching and failover, quickly.
- You are optimizing for availability across providers more than for defensible cost cuts.
- You prefer a free tier for small projects before committing spend.
Heuristics you trust versus evidence you can check
Every router claims to pick well. The operational question is what happens when it picks wrong, and what you can inspect before that. Heuristic routing asks for trust up front and offers dashboards after the fact.
Finest's answer is structural. Nothing routes down without a sealed evidence record for the exact configuration, published and versioned; a cheaper arm that refuses or fails a validator escalates to your requested model; and the receipt names what ran and what it saved. Trust is replaced by artifacts you can check, which is also why the fee can be contingent on them.
On free tiers
Requesty and much of the router category offer free tiers to start. Finest does not: a workspace funds itself before its first request. What Finest makes free is the failure case. If the proof engine finds nothing to save on your traffic, your traffic serves as requested and the fee is zero, which prices the evaluation of Finest itself at nothing.
Questions people ask
- Both claim to cut costs. What is actually different?
- The binding. Finest's substitutions are authorized by sealed per-task-class evidence and priced as a share of the proven saving; nothing routes down on judgment alone, and no saving means no fee.
- Does Finest cache like Requesty?
- Finest optimizes provider-side economics including cache-aware serving where the provider prices it. Its core claim is evidence-bound model selection rather than a caching layer.
- Is switching risky?
- The swap is a base URL and key on an OpenAI-shaped or Anthropic-shaped client, and FINEST_DISABLE=1 removes it in one line.
In 2 minutes, start cutting your API spend without sacrificing quality. Free if you don’t save money.
No model markup. You pay the host’s rate. 25% of what it proves it saved on a request. No saving, no fee.