The two words that confuse first-timers most are model marketplace and groups. This page explains both as if you’ve never seen them before.
What Is the Model Marketplace
Think of ruoli as a “supermarket for AI models.”
Lots of companies build large AI models — Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s GPT, Google’s Gemini, and various domestic Chinese models. Normally you’d sign up, top up, and configure each one separately — a hassle. ruoli puts them all on one shelf: with a single account and one API Key, you can call all of them.
That shelf is the model marketplace. Open it and you can see:
- Which models are available right now
- How much each one costs
Prices are not fixed. Just as grocery prices float with supply costs, the same model can cost differently across times and channels. So treat the marketplace price as authoritative — this doc doesn’t hardcode amounts.
What Is a Group
This is the concept people stumble on most, but it’s actually simple.
Back to the supermarket. For the same item (say, a bottle of cola), a store might buy from several suppliers:
- Supplier A: cheap, but occasionally out of stock
- Supplier B: a bit pricier, but reliable supply
- Supplier C: throws in a freebie
AI models work the same way. For the same model (say Claude), ruoli connects several different supply channels behind the scenes — some cheaper, some more stable, some with better “caching” (repeated content costs less).
ruoli bundles these channels by source, and each bundle is a group.
When you create an API Key (token), you pick one group — like choosing which supply channel to use. That choice decides three things:
- Which models you can call
- Whether it’s cheap or expensive
- How stable the channel is
Each group also carries a multiplier, a discount factor — lower means cheaper. A multiplier of 0.3 is roughly 30% of the base price.
Picking a group is the most common beginner mistake. If the group you chose doesn’t include the model you want, calls fail immediately with “no available channel” or “model not found.”So before creating a token, check the marketplace: which group is your model in? Two Examples
There are many groups; here are two common ones to give you a feel. The full list and live prices are in the marketplace:
Got It Wrong / Want to Switch
A group is bound to a token and can’t be changed after creation. To switch, just create a new token with a different group — keep or delete the old one. 
