Lazu vs New API

Lazu is based on New API, which is based on one-api. The lineage is kept in the repository's NOTICE and in the console, as the upstream's licence terms ask. This page is about what changed, not about which is better: New API is a well-run project with a large community, and anyone who already operates it has no reason to migrate unless the differences below matter to them. Facts were checked on 2 November 2026.

The shared base

Both are Go gateways with a web console. Both accept OpenAI Chat Completions and Responses, Anthropic Messages and Gemini generateContent requests, keep upstream channels with priorities and weights, retry on failure, manage users, groups and API keys with quotas, and bill in a prepaid balance. Both run from Docker Compose with PostgreSQL and Redis. If you know one console, the other is familiar.

What Lazu rewrote

Billing is a contract, not a multiplier. New API prices with ratios and expression-based pricing and stops a token or user at 403 insufficient_user_quota. Lazu replaced the charge path with a written billing contract: funds are reserved before the call, settled from the provider's usage counters, and released when a request fails without billable output. Each usage dimension records whether the provider measured it, Lazu estimated it, or it is unavailable; an unavailable number is never filled in from the reservation, and an account is never silently overdrawn. Prices are listed per model and per lane in a catalog the key can query.

A usage record the customer can read. New API keeps usage and audit logs for the operator. Lazu exposes each completed request to the key that made it: normalized usage, measurement source, billing line items and timing, fetched by request ID (request details). Requests from a coding agent group into sessions, and a script reconciles an exported session offline.

Protocol conversion with a fidelity rule. New API converts between its inbound formats and provider formats. Lazu rebuilt this on an immutable request representation: each attempt plans its route from the original request, a conversion is performed only along edges verified lossless, and a request that needs a feature the upstream cannot carry is refused with a 400 naming the feature, before the call (design note).

Routing you can see. Channel selection by priority and weight, retries and taking a failing channel out of rotation are shared. Lazu keeps client errors from counting as channel faults, and publishes a route-health page so users see the state of each route without asking the operator.

Teams and projects. New API has users and groups. Lazu adds projects with members, roles, invitations and per-member budgets, so one organization can run several teams on one balance.

Extension points. Features a deployment compiles in attach through documented hooks (docs/EXTENSIONS.md); the core builds and runs without them. New API extends through JavaScript task plugins for media tasks and otherwise through source changes.

A product, not only a gateway. Lazu ships its public pages, a model catalog with lanes and prices, and a docs site in English, Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Japanese, generated from one source with Markdown and llms.txt for agents that read docs.

What New API has that Lazu does not

• A larger community, more channel types and faster coverage of new providers.
• Subscriptions and redemption codes, and payment integrations beyond Stripe.
• Installers for 1Panel and Baota, and multi-node cluster docs.

Side by side

Which one to run

Run New API if you already run it, if you need its subscription and redemption features, or if you want the widest channel coverage as soon as a provider ships.

Run Lazu if what you sell or hand out is an account: budgets that are reserved before the call, records the customer can read, a catalog with prices, and a public route page.

See also Lazu vs LiteLLM and the overview of other gateways.