diff --git a/llm-subscription-resale-markets/analysis.md b/llm-subscription-resale-markets/analysis.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0d1e317 --- /dev/null +++ b/llm-subscription-resale-markets/analysis.md @@ -0,0 +1,368 @@ +--- +title: Analysis — LLM Subscription-Resale Markets +description: Mechanism deep-dive for the InferHub case — supply tiers, credential pipeline, quota windows, egress pooling, auction pricing, measured volume, reliability and risk surface. +status: active +category: market +tags: [inference-market, subscription-arbitrage, free-tier-farming, credential-resale, supply-chain, tos-risk] +draft: true +created: 2026-10-05 +updated: 2026-10-05 +--- + +# Analysis — LLM Subscription-Resale Markets + +> Part of [[llm-subscription-resale-markets/index|LLM Subscription-Resale Markets]] + +All captures unauthenticated and public. Claims labelled **VERIFIED** (observed in a capture +whose URL and UTC timestamp are recorded), **INFERRED** (reasoned — reasoning given), **UNKNOWN**. + +## 1. What the platform actually is + +**VERIFIED** — `inferhub.dev/terms` §2 (last updated 2026-10-02): + +> "The Service is a reverse proxy and marketplace that resells access to upstream LLM +> subscription entitlements, including subscriptions accessed via OAuth (such as Claude and +> Codex), API-key-based plans (such as Command Code), and coding plans offered by third parties +> (such as z.ai GLM Coding Plan and OpenCode Go). Publishers attach their own authorized upstream +> subscriptions; consumers call the Service through OpenAI- and Anthropic-compatible endpoints +> using an API key." + +It is a **two-sided market**: the platform owns no supply. Publishers list credentials; consumers +deposit USDC and call an OpenAI/Anthropic-compatible API; the platform routes and takes 20%. + +**VERIFIED** — `GET /api/pricing/config` (public): + +```json +{"maxAskPctOfOfficial":0.5,"platformFeePct":0.2,"publisherSharePct":80} +``` + +## 2. Supply: all 14 upstream families are subscriptions + +**VERIFIED** — `GET /api/market` (public, 200) carries a `family` per model. Complete list, with +the model counts seen on the pricing page: + +| prefix | family | nature | +|---|---|---| +| `cc` | Claude Code | vendor subscription (OAuth) | +| `cx` | OpenAI Codex | vendor subscription (OAuth) | +| `zai` | Z.AI GLM Coding Plan | third-party coding plan | +| `ocg` | OpenCode Go | third-party coding plan | +| `cmc` | Command Code | API-key-based plan | +| `cp` | ClinePass | third-party coding plan | +| `cb` | CodeBuddy | coding-agent credits (Tencent) | +| `cbcn` | CodeBuddy CN | coding-agent credits | +| `ag` | Antigravity | Google free/IDE tier | +| `ali` / `alicn` | Qwencloud/Alibaba (+CN) | cloud coding tier | +| `mm` / `mmcn` | MiniMax (+CN) | coding tier | +| `mimo` | Xiaomi MiMo | coding tier | + +Not one of them is a metered frontier API. This is the single most diagnostic fact about the +business: **the gateway's supply is other people's flat-rate products.** + +## 3. Supply tier A — paid subscription arbitrage + +The arithmetic that produces the owner's headline number: + +`cc/claude-opus-5-5` in the market feed: + +```json +{"slug":"cc/claude-opus-5-5","family":"Claude Code","minAskIn":0.796,"minAskOut":3.98, + "maxAskIn":2,"maxAskOut":10,"lastRate":0} +``` + +- Official reference: $4 /Mtok input. +- Cheapest ask: **$0.796/Mtok = 80.1% off**. +- Highest ask: **$2.00 = exactly the 50% cap.** The cap is a ceiling, not a floor. +- `lastRate: 0` — the most recent settled rate on that slug was **zero**. + +**INFERRED (strong):** with a flat subscription already paid, a publisher's marginal cost per +token is ~0, so any positive price is profit; the auction routes to the cheapest ask, so the +rational publisher undercuts toward zero. The "80% discount" is therefore the *residual of a +dumping auction*, not a purchase discount. It cannot be matched by any wholesale API deal, +because the competitor's true cost is a sunk fee rather than a per-token price. + +## 4. Supply tier B — free-tier farming (the 99% rows) + +**VERIFIED** — InferHub's own public OpenAPI (`GET /api/openapi.json`, 138,946 bytes, 73 paths) +documents bulk credential onboarding as a product feature. Quoted descriptions: + +- `POST /publisher/providers/antigravity/bulk` — *"Bulk-add Antigravity (Google) accounts from + refresh tokens. The body is the accounts payload itself… Each item needs a `refreshToken` (an + Antigravity access token lives about an hour, so the refresh token is the durable input); + `email` is optional and only names the row. Each account is refreshed for a live access token + and **onboarded onto a Cloud Code Assist project** before it is stored — accounts Google will + not onboard are reported as failures rather than saved."* +- `POST /publisher/providers/codex/bulk` — same shape for Codex. +- `POST /publisher/providers/codebuddy/refresh-tokens` — bulk OAuth refresh for CodeBuddy. +- `POST /publisher/providers/recheck-bulk`, `GET /publisher/providers/invalid` — fleet-wide + credential health sweeps. The platform **expects credentials to die routinely**. +- `GET /publisher/providers` — always paginated because *"a single publisher can own **six + figures of credentials**."* +- `PATCH /publisher/providers/{id}/auto-reset-credit` — *"Toggle Codex auto reset-credit spend + (Codex only; **auto-spends real money**)."* +- `GET /publisher/upstreams/{slug}/max-concurrent`, `.../schedule` — per-upstream concurrency and + scheduling. + +### 4.1 The vendor free tier being farmed + +**VERIFIED** — CodeBuddy (Tencent / "Buddy AI" international site), from its own pricing and +subscription pages: + +| Plan | Price | Credits | +|---|---|---| +| Free | $0 | 100 credits/month | +| Free daily activity bonus (limited-time) | $0 | +30 credits/day | +| Free, new user | $0 | 250 credits on first sign-in, valid 14 days | +| Pro | $10/mo ($96/yr) | 2,000/mo (1,000 base + 1,000 bonus), +50/day | +| Pro 7-day trial | card + auto-renew | 500 credits | +| Team | $40/seat/mo | 1,000/seat/mo | + +While the promotion runs, *"all models are available, code completion is unlimited, and up to 99 +automated tasks are included."* Base and bonus credits do **not** roll over month to month, and +the daily bonus is "non-transferable, non-giftable, and cannot be exchanged for cash". + +⇒ **A fresh free account yields roughly 1,000 credits/month at zero cost.** + +**VERIFIED** — the vendor bans the method, in its own words (Subscription Policy, "Activity +Restrictions" — rewards may be cancelled, reclaimed, and eligibility suspended): + +> "1. Participating using false, invalid, or non-personal account information; +> 2. **Using scripts, plug-ins, emulators, API calls, bulk registration, or other means to farm +> activity or rewards**; +> 3. Exploiting system vulnerabilities, network abnormalities, or technical faults for improper gain; +> 4. **Maliciously creating or controlling multiple accounts to participate**; +> 5. Violating Buddy AI's terms of service, subscription rules, credit usage rules, or applicable +> laws and regulations; …" + +and in the FAQ: *"…users may not obtain improper rewards through **bulk registration, account +sharing, account trading**, or other abnormal methods."* + +**VERIFIED** — geographic control: `www.codebuddy.ai` does not resolve from US, Indian or Russian +networks (DNS answers `0.0.0.1` to client subnets there). The resale market routes around it. + +### 4.2 The credential market that supplies it + +**VERIFIED** — `mastumbas.id/product/codebuddy`, an Indonesian digital-goods marketplace (QRIS / +local rails, "Made in Indonesia"): + +- "Codebuddy Global 480-500++Credit [BERGARANSI] (Auto Claim Harian +30 Credit Daily)", store + **Dudul**, listed Rp 123,456 → **Rp 2,300 (≈ $0.14)**, **3,303 sold**, stock 720, 2-day + warranty, 48 reviews at 5.0. +- Wholesale: ≥10 Rp 2,200 · ≥20 Rp 2,100 · ≥30 Rp 2,000 · ≥50 Rp 1,900 · **≥100 Rp 1,800/pc**. + (100 accounts ≈ Rp 180,000 ≈ $11.) +- Seller's description: *"1 token = 1 CodeBuddy account containing 450 credits, usable in 9router + for 28 AI models: text, coding, image and video. Credits increase +30 per day automatically as + long as the account is still active."* Delivery = **access token + refresh token** as a `.json`. +- Adjacent listings on the same page: Cline accounts (Rp 2,000, "limit per model 10–15 M tokens + daily, auto reset 24 h") → `cp/`; "Refresh Token Codebuddy CN 4000-5000 Credit" (Rp 15,000) → + `cbcn/`; "Apikey Codebuddy Global 30000 Credit" (Rp 100,000); a CodeBuddy-CN listing attributed + to **rdhx** (the operator named in the earlier free-token-gateway study); Gemini Pro links; and + 1-day **Webshare** proxy packs. Account supply and proxy supply on the same shelf. + +**VERIFIED (set comparison)** — InferHub `cb/` slugs vs the 28 model codes that listing +advertises: **19 exact matches of InferHub's 23**. + +``` +claude-opus-4.6 claude-opus-4.7-1m deepseek-v4.1-flash gemini-2.5-flash-image +gemini-3.1-flash-image gemini-3.1-pro glm-5.2 glm-5.3 gpt-5.3-codex gpt-5.4 gpt-5.5 +gpt-5.6-luna gpt-6-astra gpt-6-sol gpt-image-2 grok-4.6 grok-4.7 hy4-preview kimi-k3 +``` + +InferHub-only: `claude-opus-5`, `gemini-3.0-pro-image`, `gpt-6-luna`, `minimax-m3`. +Listing-only: `gemini-3.5-flash`, `gemini-3.8-flash`, `glm-5.3-flash`, `gpt-5.6-sol`, +`gpt-5.6-terra`, `hy3`, `kimi-k2.6`, `kimi-k2.8-preview`, `seedance-2.5`. + +⇒ InferHub asks **$0.04/Mtok** for `cb/claude-opus-4.6` and `cb/claude-opus-4.7-1m` — 99.2% off an +official $5 — and that capacity is reachable through a ~$0.14 account from this market. + +**INFERRED (not asserted as fact):** that MasTumbas supply specifically feeds InferHub. What is +verified is that InferHub names the family "CodeBuddy", ingests bulk CodeBuddy refresh tokens, and +serves the same model-code set; MasTumbas is a public example of the supply, not proven to be the +identical accounts. + +## 5. Routing and failure semantics + +**VERIFIED** — `inferhub.dev/docs`, "Routing tips": + +- *"Auto routing: The router picks the best publisher serving that prefix per request, falling + over to another on failure (up to 5 hops)."* +- `429 capacity_saturated` (Anthropic envelope `rate_limit_error`, `Retry-After: 2`) when every + provider for a model is at its concurrency limit. Nothing billed. +- *"Quotas: If every publisher serving a prefix has hit their plan's monthly cap, we return + `503 no_capacity` until any of their periods rolls over."* +- `402 no_provider_under_bid` with `min_input_per_mtok` / `min_output_per_mtok` when no provider + meets a consumer's bid headers. +- `x-ignore-upstream: cmc,qd,cx` — a prefix exclusion list that also reveals an unlisted `qd` + (Qoder) prefix. +- Model addressing: `/` (e.g. `ocg/glm-5.2`), a bare alias (cheapest-first across + members), `combo/`, or `free//`. +- Minimum charge $0.00001 per billed request; failed requests, no-output requests and free models + cost $0. + +**Quota modelling:** the home page states *"We poll Claude, Codex, and z.ai for live 5-hour and +weekly usage windows. No manual caps — exhaustion is detected from the source of truth."* Together +with the `usage-windows` provider sub-resource and `auto-reset-credit`, this reads as: the platform +authenticates to the **vendor's own usage/limit API** with the publisher's OAuth token and tracks +each credential's 5-hour and weekly windows, skipping exhausted ones. **INFERRED** for the +internal detail; **VERIFIED** that quota windows are polled and surfaced. + +## 6. The egress layer + +**VERIFIED** — platform copy: *"Per-provider outbound proxy pool routes your traffic through +least-used egress."* + +**VERIFIED** — the owner-supplied Discord screenshot (`owner-proxy.png`) is a proxy-vendor +dashboard: "1,000 Proxies", "∞ GB bandwidth/month", start "24 Sep 2026 16:23", "2,866,045 Total +Requests", "4.4 TB / ∞ GB Total Bandwidth used". Posted by handle **ExZork** answering *"penasaran +sama bandwith usage proxinya inferhub ngehandle puluhan ribu akun"* — "curious about the proxy's +bandwidth, InferHub handles tens of thousands of accounts." + +**INFERRED:** spreading many accounts across many egress paths prevents both rate-limit +correlation and the vendor's own proxy/VPN detection (Anthropic is documented as detecting +datacenter-range traffic). The same marketplaces that sell the accounts also sell the proxies. + +## 7. Measured scale + +**VERIFIED** — `GET /api/pricing/usage` (public), window `2026-10-04T19:30Z → 2026-10-05T19:37Z`: +**152 routable slugs, 5,684,357 requests, 406,505,881,779 input tokens** (333.3 bn cached = 82.0%), +**9,616,677,225 output tokens**. + +| family | requests | input tokens | tier | +|---|---|---|---| +| CodeBuddy (`cb/`) | 2,843,337 | 266.8 bn | free-tier credits | +| CodeBuddy CN (`cbcn/`) | 1,972,650 | 92.1 bn | free-tier credits | +| OpenAI Codex (`cx/`) | 343,683 | 15.9 bn | subscription | +| Antigravity (`ag/`) | 156,661 | 6.1 bn | Google free/IDE tier | +| Qwencloud/Alibaba (`ali/`) | 155,240 | 10.9 bn | cloud coding tier | +| Qwencloud/Alibaba CN (`alicn/`) | 93,010 | 5.0 bn | cloud coding tier | +| Z.AI GLM (`zai/`) | 48,603 | 4.1 bn | subscription | +| **Claude Code (`cc/`)** | **32,249** | **2.77 bn** | subscription | +| MiniMax (`mm/`) | 21,573 | 1.57 bn | coding tier | +| Command Code (`cmc/`) | 7,430 | 0.28 bn | subscription | +| OpenCode Go (`ocg/`) | 5,990 | 0.64 bn | subscription | +| ClinePass (`cp/`) | 3,636 | 0.30 bn | subscription | +| Xiaomi MiMo (`mimo/`) | 181 | 3.0 M | coding tier | +| MiniMax CN (`mmcn/`) | 114 | 6.0 K | coding tier | + +**CodeBuddy alone is 50% of requests and 66% of input tokens. Claude Code is 0.57%.** The +flagship-discount rows are marketing surface; the throughput is farmed free-tier commodity +capacity. Largest single slug: `cb/deepseek-v4.1-flash`, 2,434,748 requests, 242 bn input tokens. + +**VERIFIED** — pricing page headline counts: **14 curated upstreams, 155 routable model IDs, +74,310 active providers** (marketplace supply). One Claude slug (`claude-opus-4.7`) shows 6,758 +available slots. + +## 8. Reliability and latency + +**VERIFIED** — `GET /api/status` (public): overall 24 h availability 99.6%, 7 d 99.59%; **API +availability 24 h 96.4%**. API error causes: **no_capacity 62.7%**, upstream_failed 37.2%, +billing_unavailable 0%. + +Auto-route alias availability: `claude-fable-5` **35.07%** over 24 h (currently degraded at +82.35%); `claude-fable-5.1` **major_outage**, 27.5% current. + +| prefix | family | avail 24 h | p50 | TTFT 1 h | tok/s | +|---|---|---|---|---|---| +| `cp` | ClinePass | 93.10% | 7.5 s | 5.0 s | 62.8 | +| `alicn` | Qwencloud/Alibaba CN | 96.72% | 30 s | 18.1 s | 27.2 | +| `cx` | OpenAI Codex | 96.84% | 15 s | 8.5 s | 23.6 | +| `cc` | Claude Code | 97.71% | 5 s | 5.1 s | 42.0 | +| `cmc` | Command Code | 98.30% | 60 s | 8.6 s | 39.6 | +| `ali` | Qwencloud/Alibaba | 98.90% | 7.5 s | 5.0 s | 41.7 | +| `ocg` | OpenCode Go | 99.48% | 15 s | 8.4 s | 24.7 | +| `zai` | Z.AI GLM Coding Plan | 99.50% (degraded) | 15 s | 18.7 s | 24.3 | +| `ag` | Antigravity | 99.78% | 7.5 s | 10.6 s | 73.9 | +| `mm` | MiniMax | 99.84% | 7.5 s | 4.6 s | 38.2 | +| `cb` | CodeBuddy | 99.85% | 7.5 s | 11.5 s | 115.2 | +| `cbcn` | CodeBuddy CN | 99.98% | 10 s | 5.9 s | 39.0 | + +First-token times of 5–19 s and a 3–7% failed-request rate are not first-party API +characteristics. **INFERRED:** the discount is paid for in availability and latency, and a +capacity-constrained pool is the binding constraint (no_capacity dominating the error mix). + +## 9. Risk surface + +**VERIFIED (policy text)** — InferHub privacy policy: + +- On an upstream security-policy rejection, the **system prompt, tool definitions and request + parameters** of that request are retained **7 days** ("the scaffolding of that one request"). +- Safety screening reads the consumer's messages and system prompt against a keyword/pattern list + **before** sending upstream, expressly *"to keep content prohibited by our Acceptable Use terms + (material involving minors, and malicious tooling) **off the provider accounts that serve + you**"* — i.e. the pooled provider accounts are the asset being protected. Flagged text is + retained **14 days**, rule/score metadata **90 days**. Tool results, file contents and + attachments are excluded. +- Publisher credentials (API keys, OAuth refresh tokens, outbound proxy credentials) are stored + **AES-256-GCM** encrypted (`api_key_enc`, `oauth_refresh_enc`) and decrypted *"only in-process, + in memory, when a request is routed"*. + +**VERIFIED (docs):** some upstreams *"add to or reshape your system prompt (for example, Cursor +prepends its own agent prompt)"* — surfaced as `systemPromptNote` from `GET /api/catalog`. +A publisher's agent scaffolding can therefore land inside a consumer's request. + +**INFERRED:** (a) plaintext credentials exist in the operator's process memory, so a host +compromise or a rogue operator exposes live vendor credentials for every connected subscription; +(b) consumers cannot verify which credential served them, so a substituted backend is not +detectable from the outside. + +**VERIFIED** — Terms of Service posture: §7 puts every upstream-ToS obligation on the publisher +("represent and warrant" authority; "solely responsible" for compliance "including any +restrictions on shared, transferred, or resold access"; indemnify InferHub). §8: balances are +**non-refundable** and a chargeback forfeits the whole balance. §6: paid capacity may be resold, +**free-pool capacity may not**. §10: no warranty on output rights. + +## 10. Legal exposure (the landing vendor's own words) + +**VERIFIED** — `code.claude.com/docs/en/legal-and-compliance`: + +> "Customers may not pay for, resell, or **intermediate Claude usage on their end users' +> behalf**. Each end user must authenticate with their own Anthropic API key, Claude subscription +> plan credentials, or 3P inference provider credential…" + +> "Anthropic does not permit third-party developers to offer Claude.ai login into their own +> applications, or to **route requests through Free, Pro, or Max plan credentials on behalf of +> their users**. Moreover, developers may not **collect, store, or intermediate Claude.ai +> credentials or session tokens** — sign-in to a Claude account must complete through Anthropic's +> own flow." + +For the Claude Code upstream, InferHub does all three at once. **INFERRED:** the platform's +indemnity chain (publisher warrants authority; publisher indemnifies) cannot extinguish the +upstream's own prohibition — it only reallocates who pays. Secondary sources report enforcement +tightening through 2026 (subscription tokens blocked in third-party harnesses), which is +consistent with the platform's need for 1,000 rotating proxies and its `invalid` / +`recheck-bulk` sweep endpoints. **UNKNOWN:** whether any specific publisher or consumer has been +banned (deep lane pending). + +## 11. Model-substitution risk + +**INFERRED, literature-supported.** The same market is the subject of black-box auditing work: +*"Which Model Is Actually Serving You? IRIS: Budgeted Black-Box Auditing of Model Substitution and +Routing Dilution in LLM Gateways"* (arXiv 2607.20860) and *"Your 'Pro' LLM Subscription May +Actually Be 'Free': Exposing Fingerprint Spoofing Risks in LLM Inference Services"* +(arXiv 2606.16100). Both treat "the served backend may not match the advertised one" as a known +property of commercial gateways. Combined with settling prices at 0.1–1% of official on +free-tier families, substitution or mislabelling **cannot be excluded from public data**. +**UNKNOWN** for InferHub specifically — settling it needs a paid account plus a fingerprint audit, +which is outside the passive scope. + +## 12. This is a category, not an original + +- **Surplus Intelligence** (`surplusintelligence.ai`) — *"Open Market for Models: your API calls + routed to the cheapest offer, your surplus capacity sold to the highest bidder"*, with "list + your API credits" as the seller path; Base-native with a `SURPLUS` token (116.5 bn LLM tokens + reported through that ecosystem per a public project page). +- **inferencehub.tech** — same niche; its own comparison copy places "**Gray-market supply · + Start in minutes**" opposite "Real supply through hyperscaler and enterprise channels", and + states plainly "We're not cheaper than the labs." +- **FreeLLMAPI** — aggregates 34 free providers / 635 endpoints, claims 7.4 bn tokens/month. +- **OmniRoute** — peer gateway that **publishes a ToS table naming 15 providers whose terms + prohibit proxy access**, i.e. the community documents its own prohibited-use footing. +- The **September 2026 study** (`RESEARCH/free-token-gateways/`) found four separate operations + doing the operator-run version of the same thing, with first-party admission of bulk account + creation, one-account-per-proxy signup, and edu-mail resale inside the operator's own community. + +**Conclusion of the analysis:** the cheap-frontier-model product is a **credential logistics +business dressed as an API company**. Its cost base is other people's flat-rate entitlements and +free tiers; its moat is the operational machinery (bulk onboarding, token refresh, quota polling, +egress rotation, failover) rather than any supply relationship; and its main risk is that the +landing vendors actively prohibit the arrangement. diff --git a/llm-subscription-resale-markets/index.md b/llm-subscription-resale-markets/index.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0675df0 --- /dev/null +++ b/llm-subscription-resale-markets/index.md @@ -0,0 +1,86 @@ +--- +title: LLM Subscription-Resale Markets +description: How "one API key, every frontier model" gateways sell Claude/GPT at 80–99.9% off — subscription-entitlement resale, free-tier account farming, proxy-pooled credential fleets, and the auction that prices it. Primary case: InferHub (inferhub.dev). +status: active +category: market +tags: [inference-market, subscription-arbitrage, gray-market, free-tier-farming, credential-resale, supply-chain, tos-risk, codebuddy, inferhub, usdc] +draft: true +created: 2026-10-05 +updated: 2026-10-05 +origin: buzz://d8a718be-031f-4a6e-9f5c-a55466641654/51d7492cdba77ffc37bde707ab87d950a450debdb2ab50d288ffec778d6f93bd +--- + +# LLM Subscription-Resale Markets + +## Summary + +A class of inference gateways sells frontier-model access far below the vendor's list price (80% off on a Claude subscription family, up to 99.9% off on others). They do not buy tokens from the model vendors and they do not have a wholesale deal. They operate a **two-sided market for other people's subscription entitlements and free-tier credits**, priced by a cheapest-wins auction, and they route the traffic through pooled credentials fronted by rotating egress proxies. + +Primary case studied: **InferHub** (`inferhub.dev`), a USDC-on-Solana marketplace with 74,310 listed active providers, 155 routable model IDs, and 5.68 M requests / 406.5 bn input tokens measured over one 24-hour window. + +## Research Question + +How can a third-party gateway serve frontier Claude/GPT/Gemini models at 80% or more below the vendor's official per-token price — and what does that architecture imply for the people buying and selling through it? + +## Scope + +**Included:** the supply side (where the capacity comes from), the routing/auction mechanism, the credential-ingestion pipeline, the measured scale, the reliability profile, and the terms-of-service/legal exposure for both sides of the market. + +**Excluded:** attempting to authenticate, testing any credential, exploiting any endpoint, and black-box model-fingerprinting (needs a paid account — left as a next step). + +**Sufficient answer:** the supply mechanism is identified and its chain traced to a concrete, purchasable artefact, with the decisive claims backed by first-party or vendor-primary sources. + +**Method:** passive, unauthenticated reconnaissance only. Public pages, public JS/CSS, public API schemas and unauthenticated error responses, public marketplaces, DNS, npm, public code hosts. No account created, no key sent, no auth bypassed, ~1 s pacing. + +## Key Findings + +- **The model is subscription resale, admitted in the operator's own terms.** InferHub's ToS §2: *"a reverse proxy and marketplace that resells access to upstream LLM subscription entitlements, including subscriptions accessed via OAuth (such as Claude and Codex), API-key-based plans (such as Command Code), and coding plans offered by third parties (such as z.ai GLM Coding Plan and OpenCode Go)."* +- **All 14 upstream families are consumer coding-agent subscriptions, not metered APIs.** `GET /api/market` (public) returns a `family` per model: CodeBuddy, CodeBuddy CN, Command Code, OpenCode Go, ClinePass, Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Qwencloud/Alibaba (+CN), Antigravity (Google), MiniMax (+CN), Z.AI GLM Coding Plan, Xiaomi MiMo. +- **The discount is auction clearing price, not a purchase discount.** `GET /api/pricing/config` returns `{"maxAskPctOfOfficial":0.5,"platformFeePct":0.2,"publisherSharePct":80}`: a publisher ask is capped at 50% of official, and competition between publishers pushes it far below the cap, because the seller's marginal cost is approximately zero once the flat subscription is paid. +- **There are two distinct supply tiers under one roof**, and they are different businesses: + - **Paid subscription arbitrage** (`cc/` Claude Code, `cx/` Codex, `zai/`, `ocg/` OpenCode Go, `cmc/` Command Code, `cp/` ClinePass) — a real sunk monthly cost per account. This is the tier that produces the owner's headline 80% figure: `cc/claude-opus-5-5` asks $0.796/Mtok against official $4. + - **Free-tier / promo-credit farming** (`cb/` CodeBuddy, `cbcn/`, `ag/` Google Antigravity, `ali*/`) — acquisition cost is one account signup, and on the secondary market ~$0.11–0.14 per account. This is the tier that produces the 99% rows. +- **Free-tier farming is productised as a platform feature.** InferHub's public OpenAPI documents `POST /publisher/providers/antigravity/bulk` — *"Bulk-add Antigravity (Google) accounts from refresh tokens … each account is refreshed for a live access token and **onboarded onto a Cloud Code Assist project**"* — plus `*/codex/bulk`, `*/codebuddy/refresh-tokens`, `*/recheck-bulk`, `*/invalid`, `*/usage-windows` and `*/auto-reset-credit` ("Codex only; auto-spends real money"). A single publisher is documented as able to hold "six figures of credentials". +- **A concrete, purchasable artefact sits at the bottom of the chain.** Indonesian marketplace `mastumbas.id` sells CodeBuddy accounts — access token + refresh token, 450 starting credits, +30 credits/day auto-claim — at **Rp 2,300 (~$0.14)** retail, Rp 1,800 at ≥100 units, 3,303 sold. Cline accounts, CodeBuddy-CN refresh tokens and 1-day Webshare proxy packs sell on the same shelf. +- **Decisive link (slug correspondence, VERIFIED):** 19 of InferHub's 23 `cb/` slugs match that listing's advertised model codes exactly, including `claude-opus-4.6` and `claude-opus-4.7-1m` — which InferHub asks **$0.04/Mtok** for against an official $5, i.e. 99.2% off. That capacity is reachable through a $0.14 account, not through any arrangement with Anthropic. +- **The vendor's free tier is the engine: ~1,000 credits/month at zero cost.** CodeBuddy Free = 100 credits/month + 30 credits/day (limited-time daily-activity bonus) + 250 welcome credits; all models available while the promotion runs. Tencent bans exactly this in its own subscription policy (*"scripts, plug-ins, emulators, API calls, bulk registration, or other means to farm activity or rewards"*; *"maliciously creating or controlling multiple accounts"*; *"bulk registration, account sharing, account trading"*). +- **The volume is in the cheap commodity tier, not the flagships.** CodeBuddy is **50% of all requests and 66% of all input tokens**; the real Claude Code family is **0.57% of requests**. The 80%-off Claude row is the shop window. +- **The landing terms forbid the business model outright.** Claude Code's own legal & compliance page: *"Customers may not pay for, resell, or intermediate Claude usage on their end users' behalf"* and developers *"may not collect, store, or intermediate Claude.ai credentials or session tokens"*. InferHub does all three for the Claude Code upstream. +- **Consumers pay for the cheapness in failure rate and latency, and in data exposure.** API availability 24 h **96.4%**, with error causes no_capacity 62.7% / upstream_failed 37.2%; TTFT 5–19 s; `claude-fable-5` auto-route at **35%** 24 h availability. InferHub's privacy policy retains the consumer's **system prompt and tool definitions for 7 days** on security-policy rejections, retains screened message text for 14 days, and documents that some upstreams **prepend their own agent prompt** to the consumer's request. +- **The mechanic is a category, not an original.** Surplus Intelligence runs the same open market on Base rails ("your surplus capacity, sold to the highest bidder"); `inferencehub.tech` in the same niche labels the sector "**gray-market supply**" in its own comparison copy; FreeLLMAPI aggregates 34 free providers; OmniRoute publishes a ToS table of 15 providers whose terms prohibit proxy access. + +## Sources + +Full reference list with per-source context: [[llm-subscription-resale-markets/sources|Sources]]. + +Decisive ones: InferHub `/terms`, `/privacy`, `/docs`, `/faq`, `/api/openapi.json`, `/api/pricing/config`, `/api/market`, `/api/pricing/usage`, `/api/status`; `code.claude.com/docs/en/legal-and-compliance`; `codebuddy.ai` pricing/subscription docs; `mastumbas.id/product/codebuddy`; npm `@inferhub/helper`. + +## Detail Files + +- [[llm-subscription-resale-markets/analysis|Analysis]] — the mechanism in full: supply tiers, the auction, the credential pipeline, quota windows, egress pooling, measured volume, reliability, risk surface +- [[llm-subscription-resale-markets/sources|Sources]] — every reference, with what it evidenced +- [[llm-subscription-resale-markets/next-steps|Next Steps]] — open questions and the evidence that would settle them + +## Related Research + +- **Prior study, workspace only:** `RESEARCH/free-token-gateways/` (2026-09-15) — the operator-run version of the same supply (pooled CodeBuddy/free-tier accounts, bulk email + proxies + stealth browser, custom gateway; LiteLLM falsified). Four separate operations, no shared operator. +- **Workspace raw material for this topic:** `RESEARCH/inferhub-marketplace/` — `ORCHESTRATOR_INVESTIGATION.md`, `SUPPLY_CHAIN_CODEBUDDY.md`, `RECON_NOTES.md`, raw captures under `.scratch/EVIDENCE/`. + +## Discussion + +Raised by **brutaljokerz** in `#research` on 2026-10-05 while looking at `inferhub.dev/pricing` ("how does it serve models very cheap especially opus 5.5, frontier at 80% discount?"), with an operator-posted screenshot of a proxy-vendor dashboard (1,000 proxies, 4.44 TB, 2.87 M requests since 24 Sep 2026) posted by Discord handle **ExZork** in reply to a question about the platform "handling tens of thousands of accounts". + +Follow-up in the same thread connected it to the September free-token-gateway study and to the CodeBuddy-account resale market; the operator's npm package `@inferhub/helper` carries maintainer `exzork`, which matches the Discord handle. The platform describes itself as "operated by its developer as an individual"; the jurisdiction is not disclosed. + +Operator screenshot retained at `RESEARCH/inferhub-marketplace/.scratch/EVIDENCE/owner-proxy.png`. +Thread: `buzz://d8a718be-031f-4a6e-9f5c-a55466641654/51d7492cdba77ffc37bde707ab87d950a450debdb2ab50d288ffec778d6f93bd` + +## Next Steps + +- [ ] Fold in the three deep lanes still running at time of writing (credential/quota mechanism, GMV economics with the two-tier split, and the remaining 13 vendors' upstream clauses) +- [ ] Owner to add additional material in-thread +- [ ] Decide `draft: false` if this goes to the public Quartz site + +## Conclusion + +Open — `status: active`. The supply mechanism is settled; the economics quantification and the enforcement record are not. diff --git a/llm-subscription-resale-markets/next-steps.md b/llm-subscription-resale-markets/next-steps.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..67bcfab --- /dev/null +++ b/llm-subscription-resale-markets/next-steps.md @@ -0,0 +1,104 @@ +--- +title: Next Steps — LLM Subscription-Resale Markets +description: Open questions for the subscription-resale inference market study, and the evidence that would settle each one. +status: active +category: market +tags: [inference-market, open-questions] +draft: true +created: 2026-10-05 +updated: 2026-10-05 +--- + +# Next Steps — LLM Subscription-Resale Markets + +> Part of [[llm-subscription-resale-markets/index|LLM Subscription-Resale Markets]] + +## Open questions, and what would settle each + +### 1. Economics — how big is this, and does anyone make money? + +**Open:** marketplace gross volume per day in USDC; the price distribution per family vs official +list; whether the observed clearing prices are above or below a publisher's real cost in the paid +tier; the operator's 20% take; what a publisher earns per day at observed clearance prices. + +**What settles it:** arithmetic over two already-public feeds (`/api/pricing/usage` tokens × +`/api/market` asks), computed separately for the paid-subscription tier and the free-tier tier. +The blended figure is misleading because the tiers have different cost structures — tier B's +acquisition cost is ~$0.11–0.14 per account with ~450 banked credits, tier A's is a monthly fee. + +**Status:** deep lane dispatched 2026-10-05, not yet folded in. + +### 2. Mechanism — the credential and quota model in full + +**Open:** the exact scoring/selection function behind "best-scoring provider"; how a usage window +is represented and refreshed; what `auto-reset-credit` spends and when; how `combo/` and +bare aliases resolve to members; whether a consumer can observe which credential served them. + +**What settles it:** the public OpenAPI schema for `/publisher/providers`, +`/publisher/providers/{id}/usage-windows`, `/publisher/upstreams/{slug}/*`, plus the public JS +bundles under `/_next/static/chunks/`. Some of this is consumer-visible only with an account. + +**Status:** deep lane dispatched 2026-10-05, not yet folded in. + +### 3. The other 13 vendors' clauses + +**Open:** whether the same prohibition that Anthropic states explicitly also exists, quoted, for +OpenAI (ChatGPT/Codex), Google (Gemini Code Assist / Antigravity / Cloud Code Assist), z.ai GLM +Coding Plan, Cline, CodeBuddy, Command Code, OpenCode Go, MiniMax, Xiaomi MiMo and Alibaba/Qwen. + +**What settles it:** the vendor's own terms / usage policy / acceptable-use page for each, quoted +verbatim with a URL and access date. **A well-evidenced "no clause found in the sources I could +reach" is a valid result**, not a failure. + +**Status:** deep lane dispatched 2026-10-05, not yet folded in. + +### 4. Enforcement record + +**Open:** has any publisher actually lost a subscription for connecting it, and has any consumer +lost access? Is there any public review, complaint or ban report naming inferhub.dev or the +operator handle? + +**What settles it:** public reporting, Reddit / HN / X / Discord-indexed discussion, GitHub +issues, and the project's own community. Absence is itself a finding, but only after a documented +search. + +### 5. Operator and jurisdiction + +**Open:** the operator is described in their own terms as an individual, with the jurisdiction of +residence undisclosed; the data controller is that individual. QRIS / IDR pricing points at an +Indonesian-facing operation and the npm maintainer handle matches the Discord handle that posted +the proxy dashboard. + +**What settles it:** only the operator can confirm. Treat as **UNKNOWN** and do not infer +nationality from payment rails. Any further attribution stops at what the operator publishes +himself; no personal data beyond the public professional profile belongs in this vault. + +### 6. Model substitution — the one question public data cannot answer + +**Open:** are the frontier-labelled rows actually the labelled models, or a cheaper backend behind +a frontier model name? At 0.1–1% of official on free-tier families this cannot be excluded from the +outside. + +**What settles it:** a paid account plus a black-box fingerprint audit in the shape of the IRIS / +fingerprint-spoofing literature, measuring the served backend rather than trusting the model +string. **Outside the passive scope of this study** and not authorised. If it is ever run, it must +be a deliberate, bounded test — not incidental probing. + +### 7. Consumer-side viability + +**Open:** is the discount actually usable work? Measured 24 h API availability of 96.4% with +`no_capacity` at 62.7% of errors, 5–19 s TTFT, and one flagship alias at 35% availability suggest +the answer depends heavily on the model and the hour. + +**What settles it:** a metered, time-boxed trial of a single consumer balance against a first-party +API on the same workload — cost per completed task, not cost per token. Requires spending money and +an account; needs explicit owner approval first. + +## Housekeeping + +- [ ] Fold the three deep lanes into `analysis.md` when their verified versions arrive, and update + the `updated:` field +- [ ] Owner will add additional material in the Buzz thread — append rather than rewrite +- [ ] Decide `draft:` flag if this topic should appear on the public Quartz site +- [ ] Cross-link the September `RESEARCH/free-token-gateways/` study once it is vaulted (it is + currently workspace-only) diff --git a/llm-subscription-resale-markets/sources.md b/llm-subscription-resale-markets/sources.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4dccd14 --- /dev/null +++ b/llm-subscription-resale-markets/sources.md @@ -0,0 +1,101 @@ +--- +title: Sources — LLM Subscription-Resale Markets +description: Reference list for the subscription-resale inference market study, with what each source evidenced. +status: active +category: market +tags: [inference-market, sources] +draft: true +created: 2026-10-05 +updated: 2026-10-05 +--- + +# Sources — LLM Subscription-Resale Markets + +> Part of [[llm-subscription-resale-markets/index|LLM Subscription-Resale Markets]] + +All accessed 2026-10-05, unauthenticated. Web pages fetched between 19:37 and 20:05 UTC; raw +captures with URL + UTC timestamp provenance are kept in the workspace at +`RESEARCH/inferhub-marketplace/.scratch/EVIDENCE/`. + +## InferHub — first-party pages (the target of the study) + +| Source | What it evidenced | +|---|---| +| `https://inferhub.dev/terms` (last updated 2026-10-02) | §2 self-description as a *subscription-reselling reverse proxy and marketplace*; §5 acceptable use; §6 paid-vs-free resale rules; §7 publisher warranties + indemnity; §8 non-refundable balances and chargeback forfeiture; §10 no output-rights warranty | +| `https://inferhub.dev/privacy` (last updated 2026-06-17) | credential storage model (`api_key_enc`, `oauth_refresh_enc`, AES-256-GCM, in-process decrypt); 7-day retention of system prompt + tool definitions on security-policy rejection; 14-day retention of screened message text; the "keep content … off the provider accounts that serve you" screening rationale; sub-processors (PostgreSQL, Redis, NATS, Solana RPC, Cloudflare); data controller = the individual operator, jurisdiction undisclosed | +| `https://inferhub.dev/` | publisher pitch; "Real upstream quota tracking … live 5-hour and weekly usage windows"; "Per-provider outbound proxy pool routes your traffic through least-used egress"; live market ticker with per-slug asks (e.g. `cc/claude-opus-5-5 ask $0.8`); "Models reachable without buying the plan" table | +| `https://inferhub.dev/pricing` | full model table with official reference prices and per-tier asks/avail; the 50%-of-official cap statement; platform headline counts (14 upstreams / 155 model IDs / 74,310 active providers); minimum charge $0.00001; cache-badge definition | +| `https://inferhub.dev/faq` | "pools upstream LLM subscriptions … behind a single OpenAI- and Anthropic-compatible API"; bcrypt/argon2id/AES-256-GCM claims; publisher obligations | +| `https://inferhub.dev/docs` | routing tips: auto-routing with up to 5 hops; `429 capacity_saturated`; `402 no_provider_under_bid`; `503 no_capacity` on monthly caps; `x-ignore-upstream` (reveals the unlisted `qd` prefix); the `systemPromptNote` / "Cursor prepends its own agent prompt" statement; `free//` naming | +| `https://inferhub.dev/docs/api` | three surfaces on one `sk-airo-` key: inference (`api.inferhub.dev`), management REST API, MCP SSE at `/mcp/sse`; `combo/` routing | +| `https://inferhub.dev/docs/api/reference` | rate limits (30 rpm management / 500 rpm inference per account); model-name formats; minimum-charge worked example; `account_blocked` semantics | +| `https://inferhub.dev/status` | status page shell (JSON is at `/api/status`) | +| `https://inferhub.dev/refund-policy` | non-refundable balance policy | + +## InferHub — public API surface (no auth required) + +| Endpoint | Response | What it evidenced | +|---|---|---| +| `GET /api/openapi.json` | 200, 138,946 bytes, 73 paths | the entire management + publisher API: bulk credential endpoints (`antigravity/bulk`, `codex/bulk`, `codebuddy/refresh-tokens`, `recheck-bulk`, `invalid`), quota artefacts (`usage-windows`, `auto-reset-credit`), `upstreams/{slug}/max-concurrent`, `schedule`, asks; "a single publisher can own six figures of credentials"; "Codex only; auto-spends real money" | +| `GET /api/pricing/config` | `{"maxAskPctOfOfficial":0.5,"platformFeePct":0.2,"publisherSharePct":80}` | the cap, the fee, and the publisher share in one request | +| `GET /api/market` | per-slug `family`, `minAskIn/Out`, `maxAskIn/Out`, `lastRate` | the 14 families; `cc/claude-opus-5-5` minAsk $0.796 vs maxAsk $2.00 (the cap) and `lastRate` 0 | +| `GET /api/pricing/usage` | 24 h per-slug requests and token counts | measured volume: 5,684,357 requests, 406.5 bn input tokens, 9.62 bn output tokens, 152 slugs; the per-family split | +| `GET /api/pricing/cache` | per-slug prompt-cache hit rate | 82.0% of all input tokens were cached in the window | +| `GET /api/status` | availability, error causes, per-family latency | API availability 24 h 96.4%; causes no_capacity 62.7% / upstream_failed 37.2%; `claude-fable-5` 35.07% 24 h; per-family TTFT 5–19 s | +| `GET /v1/models` (bogus bearer) | 403 `{"error":{"message":"access denied","type":"forbidden"}}` | key validation; OpenAI-compatible error shape | +| `GET /robots.txt`, `/sitemap.xml`, `/openapi.json` | 404 | no robots/sitemap; the OpenAPI is served at `/api/openapi.json` | + +## Client-side artefact + +| Source | What it evidenced | +|---|---| +| `https://registry.npmjs.org/@inferhub%2Fhelper` | package `@inferhub/helper`, **maintainer `exzork`**, first published 2026-07-15, 13 versions to 0.2.9; repo `github.com/inferhub/helper` (not publicly resolvable); homepage `inferhub.dev` | +| `@inferhub/helper` 0.2.9 tarball (`dist/constants.js`, `dist/usage-plugins.js`, `dist/adapters/*`, `README.md`) | which agent configs get rewritten (`~/.claude/settings.json` incl. `ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_OPUS_MODEL`; `~/.codex/config.toml` + `auth.json`; OpenCode / OpenClaw / Hermes); usage-plugin packages `@inferhub/usage`, `@inferhub/opencode-usage` reporting to `GET /v1/me/usage`; base URL `https://api.inferhub.dev/v1` | +| `https://api.github.com/users/exzork` | public profile linked to the npm maintainer handle; account created 2017, ~65 public repos, personal site `exzork.me` | + +## CodeBuddy (Tencent) — the farmed free tier + +| Source | What it evidenced | +|---|---| +| `https://www.codebuddy.ai/pricing` | Free $0 = 100 credits/month, daily active reward 30 credits/day, 250 welcome credits, 5,000 completions; Pro $7 first month then $10/mo = 2,000 credits | +| `https://www.codebuddy.ai/docs/ide/Account/pricing` | Free 100 base credits, 30/day promotional bonus, "all models available during the promotional period", "Standard quotas resume when the promotion ends" | +| `https://www.codebuddy.ai/docs/ide/Account/Subscription` | full daily-bonus rules; **"Activity Restrictions"** banning scripts/plug-ins/emulators/API calls/bulk registration and malicious multi-account control; FAQ banning "bulk registration, account sharing, account trading"; non-transferable credits | +| `https://intl.cloud.tencent.com/document/product/1256/77269` | Free 100 credits/month; 250 new-user credits valid 14 days; Pro 7-day trial 500 credits; 30/50 credits-per-day bonus table | +| `https://mvalentsev.github.io/awesome-free-ai-coding/providers/codebuddy/` (probe-verified 2026-10-05) | independent free-tier summary; the "does not resolve from US, India and Russia" finding (`www.codebuddy.ai` DNS answers `0.0.0.1` to client subnets there) | + +## The credential resale market + +| Source | What it evidenced | +|---|---| +| `https://mastumbas.id/product/codebuddy` | CodeBuddy account (access token + refresh token) at Rp 2,300 (~$0.14), 450 credits + auto +30/day, **3,303 sold**, wholesale to Rp 1,800 at ≥100; the seller's own description of what the token is for (9router, 28 models) and the full model-code list used for the slug comparison | +| Same page, adjacent listings | Cline accounts Rp 2,000 (`cp/`), "Refresh Token Codebuddy CN 4000-5000 Credit" Rp 15,000 (`cbcn/`), "Apikey Codebuddy Global 30000 Credit" Rp 100,000, a CodeBuddy-CN listing attributed to `rdhx`, Gemini Pro links, and 1-day Webshare datacenter/residential proxy packs | + +## Upstream vendor terms + +| Source | What it evidenced | +|---|---| +| `https://code.claude.com/docs/en/legal-and-compliance` | **"Customers may not pay for, resell, or intermediate Claude usage on their end users' behalf"**; **"may not … route requests through Free, Pro, or Max plan credentials on behalf of their users"**; **"may not collect, store, or intermediate Claude.ai credentials or session tokens"** | +| `https://www.anthropic.com/legal/consumer-terms`, `https://www.anthropic.com/legal/commercial-terms` | Consumer vs Commercial ToS split (Free/Pro/Max vs Team/Enterprise/API) — cited by the Claude Code compliance page | +| `https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8241253-safeguards-warnings-and-appeals` | Anthropic enforcement surface: suspensions tied to Usage Policy, unsupported-location account creation, and ToS violations; appeal path | +| Secondary reporting on enforcement | Jan 2026 + Apr 2026 changes blocking subscription OAuth tokens in third-party harnesses; ban reports and appeal outcomes (news/community posts). Treated as **secondary**, not vendor-primary | + +## Comparables and category context + +| Source | What it evidenced | +|---|---| +| `https://www.surplusintelligence.ai/` | same mechanic on different rails — "Open Market for Models", "your surplus capacity sold to the highest bidder", "list your API credits", Base-native, `SURPLUS` token | +| `https://inferencehub.tech/` | same-niche competitor whose own copy labels the sector "**Gray-market supply · Start in minutes**" and states "We're not cheaper than the labs" | +| `https://github.com/tashfeenahmed/freellmapi` | free-tier aggregation tier: 34 providers, 635 endpoints, claimed 7.4 bn tokens/month | +| `https://devtoollab.com/blog/omniroute-free-ai-gateway` | peer gateway that **publishes a ToS table listing 15 providers whose terms prohibit proxy access**; also documents that "subscription pooling … violates seat-based licensing" | +| `https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.20860` (IRIS) | black-box auditing of model substitution and routing dilution in LLM gateways — the substitute-backend threat model | +| arXiv `2606.16100` | "Your 'Pro' LLM Subscription May Actually Be 'Free'": fingerprint spoofing risks in LLM inference services | +| `https://github.com/benben951/llm-proxy-auditor` | a tool built for exactly this trust question (prompt integrity, model substitution, response rewriting) | + +## Prior internal research (workspace, not vaulted) + +| Path | What it evidenced | +|---|---| +| `RESEARCH/free-token-gateways/CONSOLIDATED_FINDINGS.md` + `EVIDENCE_OPERATOR_TRANSCRIPT.md` (2026-09-15) | the operator-run version of the same supply: pooled free-tier accounts behind one API, CodeBuddy free-token farming, bulk email + proxies + stealth browser, edu-mail marketplace in the operator's own community; LiteLLM falsified; four separate operations, no shared operator | +| `RESEARCH/inferhub-marketplace/ORCHESTRATOR_INVESTIGATION.md` | orchestrator's full pass for this study, 12 sections, evidence-indexed | +| `RESEARCH/inferhub-marketplace/SUPPLY_CHAIN_CODEBUDDY.md` | the CodeBuddy free-tier + resale-market chain with the slug-overlap comparison | +| `RESEARCH/inferhub-marketplace/.scratch/EVIDENCE/` | raw captures (pages, API JSON, DNS, npm metadata, unpacked helper package, `owner-proxy.png`) with URL + UTC timestamp provenance |