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brian austin
brian austin

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I built a $2/month Claude API — here's the curl command

#api #claude #ai #developers

I built a $2/month Claude API — here's the curl command

I've been using Claude Code for months. The problem? Anthropic's API costs add up fast, and Claude Pro at $20/month locks you into their web UI.

So I built a flat-rate Claude API proxy. $2/month. Unlimited requests. Here's how to use it.

The basics

First, get your API key at simplylouie.com/developers.

Then, it's a drop-in replacement for the Anthropic API:

curl https://simplylouie.com/api/chat \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022",
    "max_tokens": 1024,
    "messages": [
      {"role": "user", "content": "Hello, Claude"}
    ]
  }'
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You get back a standard Anthropic-format response:

{
  "id": "msg_01XFDUDYJgAACzvnptvVoYEL",
  "type": "message",
  "role": "assistant",
  "content": [
    {
      "type": "text",
      "text": "Hello! How can I help you today?"
    }
  ],
  "model": "claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022",
  "stop_reason": "end_turn"
}
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Using it with Claude Code

This is where it gets powerful. Claude Code supports ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL to point at any API-compatible endpoint:

export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=https://simplylouie.com
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=your_simplylouie_key
claude
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Or add it to your shell profile permanently:

# ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc
export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=https://simplylouie.com
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-lou-xxxxxxxxxxxx
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Now every claude command routes through the flat-rate proxy. No per-token billing surprises.

Using it with Python

The Anthropic Python SDK respects ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL automatically:

import anthropic
import os

# Set env vars, or pass directly:
client = anthropic.Anthropic(
    api_key="your_simplylouie_key",
    base_url="https://simplylouie.com"
)

message = client.messages.create(
    model="claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022",
    max_tokens=1024,
    messages=[
        {"role": "user", "content": "Explain async/await in Python"}
    ]
)

print(message.content[0].text)
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Using it with LangChain 

from langchain_anthropic import ChatAnthropic

llm = ChatAnthropic(
    model="claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022",
    anthropic_api_key="your_simplylouie_key",
    anthropic_api_url="https://simplylouie.com"
)

response = llm.invoke("What is the capital of France?")
print(response.content)
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Using it with LlamaIndex 

from llama_index.llms.anthropic import Anthropic

llm = Anthropic(
    model="claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022",
    api_key="your_simplylouie_key",
    base_url="https://simplylouie.com"
)

response = llm.complete("Write a haiku about Python")
print(response.text)
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Why flat-rate instead of pay-per-token?

For most developers, pay-per-token billing creates a weird anxiety loop:

  • You write a prompt
  • You wonder if it's too long
  • You truncate it to save tokens
  • You get a worse response
  • You wonder if you should have paid more

Flat-rate removes that entirely. Send 100 requests or 10,000 — same $2/month.

This is especially useful for:

  • Exploratory development: Testing prompts without watching a meter
  • CI/CD pipelines: Code review bots that run on every PR
  • Team setups: One API key, multiple developers, no token-splitting math
  • Side projects: You want Claude in your app but don't want per-request billing unpredictability

The pricing math

Anthropic's direct API pricing for Claude 3.5 Sonnet:

  • Input: $3 per million tokens
  • Output: $15 per million tokens

If you send ~100 requests/day with average 500 tokens in/500 tokens out:

  • ~3M input tokens/month = $9
  • ~3M output tokens/month = $45
  • Total: $54/month

Flat-rate: $2/month.

Obviously I'm not running this at a loss — it works because most users use it less than the average. But if you're a moderate user who hits Claude a few hundred times a month, you come out way ahead.

Rate limits

The free tier (7-day trial) has rate limits to prevent abuse. Paid tier ($2/month) has generous limits designed for developer usage — not enterprise scale, but more than enough for side projects, agents, and personal tooling.

Getting started

  1. Sign up at simplylouie.com — 7-day free trial, card required
  2. Get your API key from the dashboard
  3. Replace https://api.anthropic.com with https://simplylouie.com in your code
  4. Done

The API is a drop-in replacement. No SDK changes required. No new libraries. Just a different base URL.

SimplyLouie is built by one developer. 50% of revenue goes to animal rescue. $2/month flat-rate Claude API — simplylouie.com/developers

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