Which one is right for you

A few minutes of questions. Anything without confirmed support for a hard requirement is excluded with an explanation. Everything else is ranked against what you said matters, with each point traced back to a specific published fact — so you can argue with the reasoning instead of trusting a black box. Points come off as well as on: name something you already run and a product that publishes nothing for it loses ground rather than quietly keeping its place.

What the wizard asks

The first 3 questions are below, exactly as the tool asks them. Later questions depend on these answers, so the path is usually shorter than the full list. Your answers stay in this browser unless you copy and share a result link. With analytics consent, we record progress and result interactions, but not your selected answers.

  1. Where are you in the project?

    Early on, speed of setup matters more than anything. Later, fee percentages and governance start to dominate.

    • Just exploring — Trying models out, nothing in production yet.
    • Building a product — Writing code now, expecting real users soon.
    • Already live — Real traffic today, and downtime is a problem.
    • Scaling and cutting cost — Significant monthly spend that needs bringing down.

  2. Who is going to operate this?

    Self-hosting removes vendor fees but adds work. This is the single biggest fork in the decision.

    • Nobody — it must just work — No appetite for running infrastructure.
    • We can run a service if it earns its keep — A team that already operates its own infrastructure.
    • We have a platform team — Dedicated engineers who prefer to own the data path.

  3. What matters most?

    Pick up to two. Everything is a trade-off, and naming the trade-off is most of the decision.

    • Lowest total cost — Minimise fees and markup above the model bill.
    • Widest model choice — Reach as many models and providers as possible from one key.
    • Staying up — Failover and load balancing when a provider degrades.
    • Control and visibility — Spend limits, per-team keys, logs, and guardrails.

Prefer to read rather than answer? The shortlist by job reaches similar conclusions in prose, and the comparison table shows every field for every product at once.