For Developers

Step-by-step guide to using Swan 2.0 Inference Cloud as a consumer

This guide walks through using Swan Inference as a developer consuming AI models — starting with a no-signup trial, then creating an account, topping up, and making real API requests.

Looking to earn by providing GPU resources instead? See Become a Provider for the step-by-step setup guide.

The fastest way to see Swan Inference in action: open the playground, pick a model, and send a message. No account, no API key, no credit card.

Ready for more? Sign up below to get an API key and start integrating.

Create a free account at inference.swanchain.io/signup — email and password only, no credit card required.

Verify your email before continuing. Signing up sends a verification link, and the account cannot sign in or issue API keys until you click it. If you would rather skip this, sign in with a wallet instead: a wallet-bound account authenticates by signature, so it needs no email verification.

Once verified, navigate to Keys in the dashboard. Your API key (sk-swan-*) is generated automatically — copy it and keep it secret.

2. Top up credits

Inference requests are paid per token, deducted from your account balance in real time. Fund your account via Stripe (credit card) or crypto deposit (USDC / USDT / SWAN on multiple EVM chains).

Stripe: instant processing, minimum deposit $5
Crypto: per-user HD-derived deposit address shared across EVM chains, minimum $1

20% bonus when depositing SWAN

Depositing SWAN tokens on Swan Mainnet credits your account with a 20% bonus on top of the USD value — $100 of SWAN becomes $120 of credits. Your account balance is a single USD-denominated pool regardless of how it was funded, so there's nothing special to toggle at request time; you simply get more credits per dollar when you deposit SWAN.

Combined with Swan's already-lower per-token pricing, the deposit bonus pushes effective rates roughly 50–66% below going direct to Anthropic or Google for comparable models. Flip the Pay with: SWAN toggle on the pricing page to see the effective rate across every model.

Usage is deducted from your balance per request. View balance, usage, and the transaction ledger under Billing in the dashboard.

If you mostly use open-source models, the Pro plan ($6/month, billed monthly by card) includes $24 of inference per month at list prices on free- and standard-tier models, at 1,500 requests per day, plus 75 images/day. The allowance is denominated in value rather than tokens, so it goes further on cheaper models. Premium-tier models (Claude, Gemini Pro, …) stay pay-as-you-go from your credit balance, as does anything beyond the allowance and any request where you choose the provider yourself. Subscribe from the pricing page; a model's tier is shown on its catalog page.

3. Browse models

The Models page lists every model with live pricing, context length, tier, and how many providers are online for it right now — a model is only callable while at least one provider is serving it. Click any model for details and code examples.

The Pricing page compares SwanChain's rates side-by-side against Anthropic, Google, OpenRouter, and other providers for hero models — so you can see how prices stack up at a glance.

4. Make your first inference request

Swan Inference is fully OpenAI-compatible — any existing OpenAI SDK or integration works by changing two things: the base URL and the API key. The examples below use zai-org/GLM-4.7-Flash, one of the cheapest hero models at $0.05 input / $0.36 output per 1M tokens.

curl

curl https://api.swanchain.io/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk-swan-YOUR-KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "zai-org/GLM-4.7-Flash",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Say hello in 5 words."}]
  }'

OpenAI Python SDK

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://api.swanchain.io/v1",
    api_key="sk-swan-YOUR-KEY",
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="zai-org/GLM-4.7-Flash",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Say hello in 5 words."}],
)
print(response.choices[0].message.content)

OpenAI Node.js SDK

import OpenAI from "openai";

const client = new OpenAI({
  baseURL: "https://api.swanchain.io/v1",
  apiKey: "sk-swan-YOUR-KEY",
});

const response = await client.chat.completions.create({
  model: "zai-org/GLM-4.7-Flash",
  messages: [{ role: "user", content: "Say hello in 5 words." }],
});
console.log(response.choices[0].message.content);

Streaming, embeddings, image generation, and audio transcription all work identically to OpenAI. See the API reference for every endpoint, the response headers that tell you which provider served you, and the limits.

5. Optional: choose the provider

Every model page lists the providers currently serving it, with each one's price, context window, quantization, 30-day uptime and typical time-to-first-token. To send a request to a specific one, add X-Swan-Provider: <provider-id>; add X-Swan-Allow-Fallbacks: false if you would rather the request fail than be served by someone else. The response tells you who served it and how it was billed (X-Swan-Route-Mode, X-Swan-Fallback-Reason, X-Swan-Billing-Type).

Two things to know: choosing a provider is always pay-as-you-go from your credit balance — it is not covered by a Token Plan, so keep some credit on the account — and it stays pay-as-you-go even if your provider is offline and a fallback serves the request. Details in the API reference.

Next steps

Inference Marketplace — deeper on how pricing, routing, and settlement work
Become a Provider — want to earn by sharing GPU resources instead?
API reference — full list of endpoints, headers, limits and error codes
AI agent integrations — point OpenClaw, Nanobot and friends at Swan Inference

Questions? Reach the team on Discord or open an issue on GitHub.

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