The hidden incentive problem
Every API gateway, proxy, and broker in the market today shares one thing: they make more money when you spend more money. Per-call markups, percentage-based fees, tiered pricing that rewards volume — all of it is designed so that your bill going up is their revenue going up.
That's not evil. It's just a business model. But it creates a structural moat that works against you.
What "routing" really means at most gateways
When a gateway says it "routes" your calls, what it usually means is:
- You pick a provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, etc.)
- The gateway proxies the call
- They add a margin — typically 5-20% on top of the provider's price
- Maybe they cache some responses to save themselves money
Notice what's missing: nobody is trying to find you a cheaper alternative. Why would they? A cheaper call means less revenue for them.
The free alternative nobody tells you about
Here's what we discovered building Hebline: for a surprising number of API calls, there's a free or near-free alternative that produces the same result. Open-source models running on community endpoints. Cached responses from identical queries. Smaller models that handle simple tasks just as well as GPT-4.
But no gateway will route you there, because free calls generate zero margin.
Hebline's structural difference
Hebline is an MCP-native API broker. We don't mark up API calls. We don't earn more when you spend more.
Our model is simple: no margin on your API calls. Ever. That means we're actually incentivized to find you the cheapest option — including free ones.
When your agent asks for a weather API, we check: is there a free endpoint that's good enough? When it needs an LLM call, we check: can a smaller, cheaper model handle this? When it needs a paid service, we route to the provider with the best price for that specific call.
The math that matters
Consider a typical AI agent making 10,000 API calls per month:
- Traditional gateway: $0.002 markup per call = $20/month in hidden fees, on top of what you pay the provider
- Hebline: Routes 40-60% of calls to free alternatives. The calls that do go paid hit the cheapest provider. Net savings: 30-50% on your total API bill
The more calls your agent makes, the more the savings compound. That's the opposite of how markups work.
Why this matters for agents
Autonomous agents don't ask permission before making API calls. They just call. If your agent is running through a gateway that marks up every call, your costs scale linearly with agent activity.
With Hebline, increased agent activity means more opportunities to find free alternatives. Your costs grow slower than your usage. That's the structural advantage of separating routing intelligence from per-call revenue.
Try it yourself
Hebline is open-source and MCP-native. Install the MCP server, point your agent at it, and watch your API costs drop.
npm install -g @hebline.ai/mcp-server
Add to your claude_desktop_config.json:
{
"mcpServers": {
"hebline": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "-p", "@hebline.ai/mcp-server", "hebline-mcp"]
}
}
}
No API keys needed. Free services work instantly — including LLMs via Groq.