One top-up can support several projects, but a shared balance needs a spending plan. Otherwise, an experimental agent can consume money you intended for a customer-facing feature. This first-run checklist shows how to divide a single funding amount into project budgets, track actual consumption, and move unused allocations without losing sight of the total.
SwiftRelay is a practical fit when those projects use different models or tools: it provides pay-as-you-go access with per-token billing. The important distinction is that your project allocations are accounting targets, not necessarily separate wallets or enforced spending caps.
1. Divide the top-up before sending requests
Start with a funding amount and give every project a clear purpose. For a $100 example, allocate $40 to a support assistant, $30 to a coding workflow, and $20 to a document-processing experiment. Keep the remaining $10 as a shared reserve.
- Support assistant: $40 for testing and live requests.
- Coding workflow: $30 for development tasks and agent sessions.
- Document experiment: $20 for extraction and evaluation.
- Shared reserve: $10 for approved overruns.
These are budget choices, not estimates of how many requests each amount will buy. Request costs depend on the selected model and token usage.
2. Create one funding ledger for all projects
If you are new to the service, sign up for SwiftRelay and choose a top-up amount that matches your initial testing budget. New accounts receive a small gift credit; record any available gift credit separately so you do not mistake it for money you added.
Create a spreadsheet or internal ledger with columns for project, allocated budget, recorded spend, remaining allocation, and owner. Add a reserve row. Your allocations plus reserve should equal the amount you have deliberately made available for this run.
Do not assume that writing “$40” beside a project reserves those funds inside the service. Unless you have verified an enforcement mechanism, the ledger is your team's spending agreement.
3. Give each project's requests a traceable identity
Keep project configuration separate, even when the projects use the same provider. Where separate API keys are available, use one per project and keep credentials on the server. Otherwise, identify the project in your own request logs without recording secrets or sensitive prompt content.
For OpenAI-compatible SDKs, configure the base URL as https://api.fastapirelay.com/v1. Claude Code and Gemini CLI use the bare host, https://api.fastapirelay.com. Check each client's configuration rather than copying one endpoint setting everywhere.
Separate credentials help attribution and credential rotation; they do not automatically create independent balances or hard budget limits.
4. Run a small cost sample for each allocation
Before committing the full budget, run a representative batch for each project. Include normal requests, longer inputs, and workflows that make repeated calls. A coding agent's single task may involve several model requests, so count the whole task rather than only its first response.
For example, test Gemini 2.5 Flash on document extraction and Claude Sonnet 5.5 on coding tasks if those models fit your requirements. Check current model pricing and record available token usage alongside actual charges. Avoid treating equal request counts as equal spending.
5. Add budget checks where requests originate
Choose an internal review threshold, such as when a project has consumed three-quarters of its allocation. At that point, its owner should inspect remaining work before continuing.
If you need a firm stop, implement a budget gate in your application or gateway using reliable cost records. Account for concurrent requests and charges that may not yet be reflected in your ledger. An alert alone will not prevent overspending, and a local estimate may differ from the final billed amount.
6. Reconcile spending before moving the reserve
At each review, reconcile your project records with available billing information. Investigate missing requests, retries, and unexplained differences before reallocating money.
If document processing finishes under budget, record the unused allocation as a ledger transfer to another project or the reserve. That is a change to your spending plan, not necessarily a transfer between platform wallets. Keep the total reconciled, name the approving owner, and top up again only when the remaining shared funds justify it.