Model Provider
A company that develops and offers access to large language models, usually via an API.
What Is a Model Provider
A model provider is a company or organization that develops and offers access to large language models, typically through an API, a hosted service, or downloadable model weights. This category includes organizations that train their own proprietary models and offer them over an API, as well as providers that host open-weight models for others to run.
How Access Works
Most model providers expose their models through an API that accepts a prompt and returns generated text, usually authenticated with an API key tied to an account and billed by token usage. Some providers also offer subscription plans that grant access to their models through a chat interface or connected application via account login rather than a metered API key. Applications that need to call a model programmatically generally store the provider's API key on a server rather than in client-side code, since the key grants billable access and, in many cases, access to any data sent with it.
Why the Choice of Provider Matters
Different providers vary in model capability, context window size, pricing, latency, data handling policies, and the regions where their infrastructure runs, so the choice of provider affects both the cost and the behavior of an application. Systems that support multiple providers give users flexibility to pick a model suited to a given task, and to avoid depending entirely on a single provider's availability or pricing. In Agenhood, provider API keys are stored server-side and encrypted, and users can alternatively connect an existing Claude or ChatGPT subscription through OAuth instead of supplying a separate API key, with a model catalog used to select which provider and model an individual agent uses.
Related Concepts
- Model catalog: a curated list of models, often spanning multiple providers, that an application exposes to users.
- API key: a credential used to authenticate requests to a provider and attribute usage and billing.
- OAuth connection: an alternative to an API key that lets a user grant access to an existing subscription without sharing raw credentials.