cd /news/ai-infrastructure/launch-hn-tokenless-yc-s26-automatic… · home topics ai-infrastructure article
[ARTICLE · art-78890] src=usetokenless.com ↗ pub= topic=ai-infrastructure verified=true sentiment=↑ positive

Launch HN: Tokenless (YC S26) – Automatic model switching to save money

Tokenless (YC S26) launched a drop-in API router that automatically selects the most cost-effective AI model for each request, claiming to cut inference costs by up to 57% while maintaining quality. The startup, founded by AI researchers from Google DeepMind, Princeton, and UC Berkeley, exposes an OpenAI and Anthropic compatible endpoint and is backed by Y Combinator.

read2 min views1 publishedJul 29, 2026

less

A drop-in replacement for your API calls — always routed to the right model.

Same quality, half the cost. #

Most calls don’t need a frontier model. Tokenless fans out your request to a group of models and watches them think. Once a model is clearly on track, we select it and cancel the other models, and you only pay for what you need.

We expose an OpenAI and Anthropic compatible endpoint. Point your models at us and get started today!

Measured, not marketed. #

Cost versus quality on public coding benchmarks — the same quality as Opus 4.8, at a fraction of the cost per task.

Model Solved $ / task vs Cheap.
PRO 72% $0.32 -57%
GPT 5.5 76% $0.74
Opus 4.8 72% $2.41
MAX 82% $6.70
PRO GPT 5.5 Opus 4.8 MAX
TerminalBench 2.1
Solved 72% 76% 72% 82%
$ / task $0.32 $0.74 $2.41 $6.70
vs Cheapest -57%
LiveCodeBench
Solved 89.0% 85.7% 88.9% 90.4%
total $ $74.78 $84.27 $80.01 $85.33
vs Cheapest -7%

Need maximum quality instead of maximum savings? MAX routes each task to the best available model.

See what you’d save. #

*Estimates use published token prices (including cache rates) and editable routing assumptions in the source. Your rate depends on your traffic. Spend history & trend: Ramp AI Index — AI spend per employee, Jun 2025–Jun 2026, matched to the cohort your spend sits in and extrapolated at its trailing 12-month growth.

Built by AI researchers from Google DeepMind, Princeton, and UC Berkeley.

Backed by Y Combinator.

Cut the bill. Keep the quality. #

Book a demo and we’ll run the numbers on your actual traffic — or swap two lines and see for yourself.

── more in #ai-infrastructure 4 stories · sorted by recency
── more on @tokenless 3 stories trending now
sponsored brought to you by zahid.host 4,200+ EU-deployed projects
reading about agents? ship yours in a single git push.

Run your AI side-project on zahid.host

EU-based hosting, git-push deploys, automatic HTTPS, no cold starts. Free tier with a custom domain — perfect for shipping the agent you just read about.

$git push zahid main
Live at https://your-agent.zahid.host
Get free account → Pricing
from €0/mo · no card required
LIVE [news/launch-hn-tokenless-…] indexed:0 read:2min 2026-07-29 ·