Laozhang API Review: Pricing & Comparison

Why Laozhang API is many people’s first stop

In Chinese-speaking AI developer communities, if you ask “which domestic Claude relay is good,” Laozhang API (api.laozhang.ai) almost always shows up in the answers. Not because it’s the cheapest, and not because it has the most features, but because it’s pulled off something that sounds simple but isn’t easy at all: operating stably over the long term in an industry where operators vanishing overnight or going down are common occurrences.

This kind of stability matters especially for developers just getting started — switching platforms, re-applying for an API key, testing compatibility — every migration has friction costs. Choosing a reliable starting point is worth more than chasing the absolute lowest price.

The current homepage also leads with an AI image-model online-testing playground (Nano Banana series and GPT Image 2, free/low-price), and the unified API now serves 200+ models covering the full Claude/GPT/Gemini families plus image generation.

What “priced at parity with official rates” actually means

Laozhang API’s core promise is parity pricing with official rates — meaning it bills at Anthropic/OpenAI’s original official pricing, with no markup. Converted at the current exchange rate (roughly ¥7/USD):

Model	Input price (/M tokens)	Output price (/M tokens)
Claude Fable 5	~¥21	~¥105
Claude Opus 4.8	~¥35	~¥175
Claude Sonnet 4.6	~¥21	~¥105
Claude Haiku 4.5	~¥7	~¥35
GPT-5.5	See official site	See official site

Note: the prices above are converted from official USD pricing at ¥7/USD — defer to Laozhang API’s official site for actual pricing, since both the exchange rate and official pricing may change over time. New accounts receive a $0.5 test credit for API connectivity verification.

“Priced at parity with official rates” isn’t the same as “the lowest domestic price.” Some relays manage to price below official rates through efficient account-pool management or bulk purchasing — if your monthly call volume is large, the price gap can be significant. See Yunwu’s low-price strategy or 147API’s discounted pricing for reference.

Stability: what is this label actually worth

In the relay market, “stability” is an easy word to say and a hard metric to verify. Laozhang API’s stability credibility mainly comes from two sources:

Long-term community reputation: in domestic user groups for tools like Claude Code and Cursor, negative reviews of Laozhang API are relatively rare, and feedback like “used it for most of a year with no issues” isn’t uncommon.

A sound business model: parity pricing means Laozhang API can’t profit by cutting corners on cost — its revenue mainly comes from economies of scale (fees/service charges accumulated across a large user base). This model provides some positive discipline for long-term operation.

Use cases

The user profile Laozhang API fits best:

• First time using a domestic Claude relay: you don’t want to run into problems, so you pick a community-verified platform to get running first, then optimize later based on your needs
• Individual developers’ daily use: using tools like Claude Code and Cursor every day, needing stable, uninterrupted access, where price isn’t the top priority
• Small teams doing quick validation: during the product-prototyping stage, it’s not worth spending time comparison-shopping and testing — just start with something trustworthy

Scenarios we wouldn’t recommend it for:

• Large-scale calling, with token usage exceeding ¥5,000/month: at this point the price gap becomes significant, and it’s worth specifically comparison-shopping low-price relays

Note: Laozhang API now supports corporate invoicing, service contracts, and monthly settlement (enterprise contact: hi@laozhang.ai) — the earlier “corporate invoicing not confirmed” caveat is outdated, and enterprise users needing compliant procurement can process reimbursements normally.

How to connect

Laozhang API uses an OpenAI-compatible protocol, so the integration is standard:

import anthropic

client = anthropic.Anthropic(
    api_key="your Laozhang API key",
    base_url="https://api2.laozhang.ai"  # API domain migrated to api2.laozhang.ai in 2026-07; api.laozhang.ai still works
)

message = client.messages.create(
    model="claude-opus-4-8",
    max_tokens=1024,
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}]
)

Claude Code configuration: in the config file under the ~/.claude directory, set ANTHROPIC_API_KEY to your Laozhang API key and ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL to https://api2.laozhang.ai.

Related reviews

• Segmind: Flux/SD image generation from as low as $0.001/image, a go-to for large-batch creative generation
• hvoy.ai: a relay-platform directory and comparison-review hub — not a relay itself, it helps you find the right one
• Sulian AI: low-latency multi-line backup, disaster-recovery architecture, stable production-grade direct connect
• ByteCat: aimed at coding engineers, includes a complete Codex Linux/Windows guide, mainland direct connect, focused on AI coding models