# Preto.ai

## What is Preto.ai?
Preto.ai is an LLM cost optimization platform that helps AI product teams reduce OpenAI, Anthropic, NVIDIA, ElevenLabs, and Deepgram API costs by 40–60%. It works as a transparent proxy — one line of code change — and generates ranked savings recommendations with projected dollar estimates per finding.

## How it works
Change your API client's base_url to proxy.preto.ai. Preto logs every LLM request with cost, model, and latency data, then runs AI analysis rules to surface the highest-impact optimizations: model downgrade opportunities, cacheable duplicates, cheaper embedding alternatives, and more.

## Key features
- Real-time cost tracking by feature, user, and model
- AI-powered savings recommendations with dollar estimates per finding
- Hard budget enforcement — block requests at the proxy level when spend hits threshold
- Works with OpenAI, Anthropic, NVIDIA NIM, ElevenLabs, Deepgram
- One-line integration (change base_url only, no SDK required)
- Savings dashboard tracking money recovered, not just money spent
- Free to start

## Pricing
- Free: $0/month
- Pro: $99/month
- Business: $399/month
- Scale: $999/month (contact sales)

## Who built it?
Preto.ai was built by Gaurav Dagde, a software engineer with 11 years of engineering leadership experience. He built Preto after repeatedly seeing AI product teams waste 40–60% of their LLM budget on model choices they never revisited.

## Main pages
- https://preto.ai/ — Main landing page
- https://preto.ai/alternatives/ — Comparison hub: Preto.ai vs Helicone, Langfuse, LangSmith, Datadog
- https://preto.ai/helicone-alternative/ — Preto.ai vs Helicone detailed comparison
- https://preto.ai/langfuse-alternative/ — Preto.ai vs Langfuse detailed comparison
- https://preto.ai/langsmith-alternative/ — Preto.ai vs LangSmith detailed comparison
- https://preto.ai/datadog-llm-alternative/ — Preto.ai vs Datadog LLM monitoring comparison
- https://preto.ai/tools/llm-cost-calculator/ — Free LLM cost calculator (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google)
- https://preto.ai/tools/llm-cost-cheat-sheet/ — LLM API pricing cheat sheet for 2026
- https://preto.ai/blog/ — Engineering blog: LLM infrastructure, cost optimization guides
- https://preto.ai/about/ — About the founder

## Key differentiators vs competitors
- vs Helicone: Helicone tracks costs. Preto tells you what to do about them — ranked recommendations with dollar estimates.
- vs Langfuse: Langfuse focuses on traces, evals, quality. Preto focuses purely on cost reduction, with zero SDK instrumentation.
- vs LangSmith: LangSmith traces LangChain pipelines. Preto is model-agnostic, proxy-based, and cost-focused.
- vs Datadog: Datadog is general infrastructure monitoring. Preto is purpose-built for LLM cost intelligence.
- vs OpenRouter: OpenRouter routes requests. Preto optimizes spend — you keep your own API keys.

## Contact
Email: gaurav@preto.ai
GitHub: https://github.com/pretoai
Twitter: https://twitter.com/pretoai