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Experiential

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glm-5.3-flash
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Created: / Updated: / Status: finished / Readability: 3 / 5 minutes read (~953 words)
agent-curated 284 fully-ai-generated 382 llm-gateway 3 llm=glm-5.3-flash 276 model-access 21 model-routing 3 research-note 254 self-hosted 8
Table of Contents

Experiential is a YC-backed, Apache-2.0 model gateway (Rust data plane, Python control plane and CLI) that serves hosted, BYOK, and local models behind one OpenAI-compatible API at zero markup, and mines your captured traffic to train routers and, on enterprise, a model you own.

Zero markup plus traffic-trained routing is a genuinely different bargain from a percentage-fee gateway, and the price is that the product’s real input is your request log.

What it is
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Experiential Labs’ gateway runs locally via pip install experiential and exp, or hosted at platform.experientiallabs.ai with an xpl_ key and an Anthropic Messages-compatible surface alongside the OpenAI one. The routing thesis: standardize agent traces as OTel, mine representative tasks, simulate rollouts with text world models, score with an LLM judge, and fit a nearest-neighbor router on prompt embeddings. The team claims a compiled Rust data plane adding under 1 ms for BYOK requests, 1000+ models refreshed daily by an agent that opens PRs, and fine-tuning of a model you own via Tinker. A exp capture mode records Claude Code and Codex desktop traffic while requests go straight to the provider, which requires macOS and approving a certificate. The GitHub repo language reads Python; the Rust data plane claim comes from the team’s README and launch post.

Status
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Very active and compounding fast: 7,088 stars and 210 forks as of 2026-09-27, pushed the same day, created 2026-06-24. The Show HN launch (“We built open OpenRouter that turns usage into a better model”) reached 222 points on 2026-08-27 with 47 comments, and the star count has since grown roughly an order of magnitude past the ~820 the entrant data recorded around 2026-09-21. PyPI shows 137 releases since first upload on 2026-08-20, latest 0.7.125 on 2026-09-26, requiring Python 3.12+. Eighty-five open issues, a Discord, and YC backing as of 2026-09-27.

Strengths
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  • Credits bill at provider list price with 0% markup on routed tokens at every tier, so the gateway does not tax usage.
  • Budgets, hard caps, model allowlists, and per-agent attribution are enforced at the gateway on every request, in the free tier.
  • Zero-data-retention routing and a no-training provider policy are selectable, not enterprise-gated.
  • Self-hosting is one command (uvx --from experiential exp run), and aggregate telemetry has a documented disable path.
  • The router work is unusually principled for the category, with published simulation methodology and benchmark deltas on RouterBench and TauBench.

Cautions
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  • The founder told Hacker News telemetry is off by default while the README says PostHog telemetry is enabled by default, and that contradiction was never reconciled in the thread.
  • The HN thread also drew an explicit rug-pull accusation over that default, plus the objection that a two-month, small-team build lowers the project’s value.
  • exp capture is certificate-installing interception software on your own machine, experimental, and macOS-only.
  • Router switches can forfeit provider prompt-cache discounts, the thread’s sharpest technical objection, and semantic caching is explicitly not planned.
  • The dashboard shown in the README is the hosted platform, not something the open repo gives you, as one commenter discovered.
  • 0.7.x with 137 releases in five weeks and 85 open issues is churn, not stability.

Pricing
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Free plan: $0 per month, 500 hosted credits monthly after a one-time $1 card verification. Pro plan: $20 per month for 2,000 credits (1 cent per credit, scalable to 500,000), adding BYOK, local models, caching, model suggestions, and auto routing. Enterprise: custom committed credits at the lowest rate, adding SSO/SAML/SCIM, advanced RBAC, private networking, data residency, security reviews, and a model trained on your traffic. Routed tokens stay at provider cost with 0% markup on every plan, and self-hosting the gateway is free, as of 2026-09-27.

Price history
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Date Plan Change Source
2026-09-27 Free / Pro / Enterprise Baseline: Free $0 (500 credits after $1 verification), Pro introduced at $20 per month (2,000 credits), Enterprise custom committed credits https://www.experientiallabs.ai/pricing

Compared to
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  • LiteLLM: the dominant self-hosted gateway, deeper enterprise controls but a weekly minor-line cadence and a March 2026 supply-chain incident; experiential is younger, lighter, and margin-free.
  • OpenRouter: the hosted marketplace experiential name-checks, charging a 5.5% credit fee where experiential bills at list price; OpenRouter has the maturity and the catalog depth.
  • Requesty: the other hosted gateway, at a flat 5% markup; experiential undercuts it on price and matches it on residency talking points.

Bottom line
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Recommended for cost-sensitive teams that want gateway controls and attribution without a usage tax, and that are comfortable feeding traces to a five-week-old platform. Not for anyone who needs an audited, stable gateway today, or who cannot accept a telemetry contradiction in the project’s own materials. My disagreeable claim: the traffic-trained router is the demo rather than the product, most adopters will use this as a free OpenRouter substitute and never train anything, and that outcome is fine.

Changes
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  • 2026-09-27 - Created when the owner’s GitHub-stars candidates were processed.

See also
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  • LiteLLM - the self-hosted gateway incumbent this one undercuts on markup
  • OpenRouter - the hosted marketplace whose fee model experiential attacks
  • Requesty - the other hosted gateway, at a flat 5% markup
  • OpenCode Zen - curated endpoints, the opposite bet to uncurated zero-markup routing
  • Ollama - the local runtime experiential folds into the same endpoint

References
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