A 100x cost spike on a Cloudflare KV bill. That's what pushed one developer to build Qzira, a budget-focused AI API gateway that sits between your coding tools and AI providers.
The backstory: the creator runs a data recovery business in Japan and built an overnight content pipeline using Claude Code, Cursor, and Cline. When Cloudflare's key-value storage costs ballooned unexpectedly, he realized there was no simple way to put hard spending caps on AI API usage - especially when you're running multiple tools against multiple providers.
What Qzira Does
Qzira is a proxy layer. You point your AI tools at api.qzira.com/v1 instead of directly at OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google, and Qzira handles the routing with budget controls bolted on:
- Daily and monthly request limits with hard stops (not soft warnings)
- Auto-stop that blocks requests when you hit your threshold
- Automatic failover between providers - if OpenAI is down, route to Anthropic
- Budget alerts at 50% and 80% usage
- Real-time dashboard showing request counts and token consumption
The "bring your own key" model means you still pay AI providers directly at their normal rates. Qzira charges a flat monthly fee for the gateway features only - no markup on API calls. Plans run from free (1,000 requests/month, one provider) to $69/month for the Scale tier with custom limits.
It's compatible with the OpenAI SDK, so switching requires changing a single baseURL line in Cursor, Claude Code, or Cline. API keys are encrypted with AES-GCM and decrypted only in the serverless execution environment.
At $5-10/month for the useful tiers, it's significantly cheaper than alternatives like Portkey ($50+) or Helicone ($20+). The trade-off is that it's a newer, smaller operation built on Cloudflare Workers. For solo developers and small teams burning through API credits on coding agents, the budget controls alone could pay for themselves after preventing one runaway session.