{
  "video_id": "reddit_1wgwe4n",
  "channel_slug": "LocalLLaMA",
  "channel_handle": "r/LocalLLaMA",
  "title": "CrofAI \"cheapest inference provider in the world\" gets exposed as an OpenRouter wrapper, routing requests to smaller, cheaper models at up to 20x markup. CrofAI responds to Wire Fraud allegations by denying everything, then backtracking, then 3 hours later wiping their entire online presence",
  "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1wgwe4n/crofai_cheapest_inference_provider_in_the_world/",
  "external_url": null,
  "upload_date": "20260915",
  "published_at": "2026-09-15T10:19:51+00:00",
  "transcript": "Disclaimer: no AI was used whatsoever to write this post\n\nCautionary tale about chasing cheap tokens.\n\nexposé: https://kendell.dev/blog/crofaifalse/\n\nreaction by nahcrof, announcing the shutdown of the service: https://x.com/nahcrof/status/2099552389434900643 - now deleted, archive picture: https://i.imgur.com/teOQngH.png\n\nNahCrofAI (crof.ai, nahcrof.com) was an inference provider which had all the latest models at the cheapest price, often significantly below the lowest alternative on OpenRouter. The owner claimed that they are running custom inference engines that allows them to offer tokens for dirt cheap, and other providers are suffering from \"skill issues\", that's why they are so expensive.\n\nIn reality:\n\n- \"CrofAI is an OpenRouter wrapper that silently routes to cheaper or weaker models than what you request\"\n\n- For example, expensive models like `kimi-k3` are sold at $2/$10 in/out, but instead routed to `GLM 5.3 Flash` via OpenRouter, representing a 13.3x multiple on input, and 20x multiple on output\n\n- CrofAI's \"own model family\" `greg-2-ultra` routes to GLM 5.2, `greg-1-mini` routes to Qwen 3.5 9B. `greg-2-super`, `greg-1`, `greg-1-super` routes to Kimi K2.7 Code. All of these at a significant markup compared to the actual model being served. CrofAI admits in DMs that his claims of the `greg` family being made by him is a lie. \n\n- The person investigating details the 5 different attempts by CrofAI at fixing their models being served via OpenRouter after given a heads-up and a lengthy grace period. In all 5 attempts, the only change CrofAI made was attempts to hide the fingerprints of OpenRouter, while still serving models through them\n\n- Other inconsistencies don't add up either: CrofAI claims to run Kimi K3 on RTX Pro 6000s rented via Vast. That model requires ~802GiB even at the lobotomy level quantization of Q2_K. The largest RTX PRO 6000 machine on Vast has only 8 of them, totaling 765GiB. He also claimed that for the purposes of \"investigating\" the \"issue\" of his API routing to OpenRouter, he will have deepseek-v4-flash-0731 running on his local DGX Spark. A Spark has 128GB memory, and is therefore unable to run that model.\n\nCrofAI responded to the exposé by announcing the shutting down of their service; after their failure to provide their own inference, they promise to provide one last thing: a refund to those asking.\n\n# UPDATE\n\n**UPDATE:** around 4:30 AM UTC of Sept 15, the owner published a now-deleted blog post (archive [image](https://i.imgur.com/SgOg59F.jpeg)) writing under the fake pretense that it's his \"team\" authoring it, stating all of CrofAI founder's claims \"were written under a lot of stress, and they described the situation as worse it was\", and that a new team is taking over, with the service being resumed in 2 weeks.\n\nAt the same time, the CrofAI twitter account was also supposedly \"taken over\" by the team, starting each twitter reply with \"Hey, Nathan here\", stating the founder is stepping back and a \"team\" is taking over everything. This fake pretense act only lasted a few hours, and scared either by the public not buying the Nth fake story of the pathological liar that CrofAI is, or by the public's replies reminding him that what he committed is numerous counts of wire fraud, he has now deleted all his online presence: nahcrof.com and crof.ai return 404, Twitter page is deleted, /r/CrofAI sub is now private.\n\n[Here](https://i.imgur.com/L7Lc4lE.jpeg) is another image of the owner admitting that he was defrauding customers for the entire 2 year operation of his service, then begging the investigator to help him cover his tracks and not expose him\n\n\n\n--- Top Comments ---\n\n\n[1 upvotes] Your post is getting popular and we just featured it on our Discord! [Come check it out!](https://discord.gg/PgFhZ8cnWW)\n\nYou've also been given a special flair for your contribution. We appreciate your post!\n\n*I am a bot and this action was performed automatically.*\n\n[114 upvotes] Never heard of them, but sounds like yet another good reason to use local models. \n\n[28 upvotes] Wow! Good thing I run my own inference and am never affected by such scams.\n\n[26 upvotes] I suspected this was possible. I just didn't expect them to do it so brazenly. \n\nIf I were in his shoes, what I would've done is not to provide *every* model, but only provide every model that is *not* on the pareto frontier. Replace the call with one to a pareto model, give a small discount, and pocket the difference in API costs. The customer isn't the wiser as the model that's being provided is *better* than what they requested, while also being *cheaper*.\n\nBut dishonest people always have to be too greedy and get caught out.",
  "transcript_chars": 4688,
  "ingested_at": "2026-09-15T13:30:04.210236+00:00",
  "source": "reddit",
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    "author": "SorosAhaverom",
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