2026-07-26 19:30 UTCOriginal source2 min readUpdated: 2026-07-26 19:45 UTC

An Inside Look at the Relay Market Powering Token Resellers and Fraud

Matt Lenhard's investigation reveals a market where LLM tokens are resold at a discount by abusing free trials, unprotected support bots, stolen credit cards, and chargeback attacks. Primarily in China, resellers use open-source proxy software like one-api and new-api to pool API keys. Buyers seek cheap tokens, avoid geo-restrictions, or collect data for model distillation. The author calls for stricter API key caps from vendors.

SourceSimon Willison's Weblog

Simon Willison’s Weblog

26th July 2026 - Link Blog

An Inside Look at the Relay Market Powering Token Resellers and Fraud (via) Fascinating investigation by Matt Lenhard into the market that has grown up around reselling LLM tokens at a discount by pooling API keys from various sources.

This looks to be mostly a thing in China. Resellers sell access to an LLM proxy that offers significant discounts on regular API pricing, which they achieve by abusing free trials, proxying through unprotected support bots, or sometimes through stolen credit cards or chargeback attacks.

The software they are using for these proxies is open source - mostly one-api and its more actively developed fork new-api, both legitimate API proxy products which can be used to load. balance requests across a pool of API credentials.

The buyers are seeking cheap tokens, avoiding geo-restrictions, and in some cases collecting data for model distillation.

I've been cautious about exposing my own LLM-driven applications publicly out of fear of abuse leading to big token bills. The existence of this marketplace makes me even more cautious: there's now an entire ecosystem that can profit from finding a new unprotected endpoint to exploit.

LLM vendors really need to get better at offering strict caps for their API keys. I want my LLM apps to stop working the moment they hit a dollar threshold I've set for a period of time.

Here's the (Chinese language) forum thread that served as the principal source for Matt's article.