Models & billing

AI models

Built-in Murmurator AI models or your own provider keys — naming, defaults, how steps pick a model, and what each costs.

llm and agent steps — and the workflow assistant — run on AI models. Every account chooses its own mix:

Murmurator AI Your own keys
Setup One click Add a provider API key
Models Claude Fable 5.1, Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5, Haiku 4.5 Anything your provider offers
Billing Per token on your Murmurator invoice Directly by your provider, nothing added
Limits Monthly spend limit you control Your provider's limits
Data Processed by our inference provider (DigitalOcean) Under your own provider agreement

Named models

Every model in an account has a short name — smart, fast, reviewer — and steps refer to that name:

- key: review
  kind: llm
  model: smart
  prompt: "Review this diff: {{ steps.pr.output.diff }}"
  • One model is the account default, used by any step without a model.
  • Names decouple workflows from vendors. Point smart at a different model and every workflow using it switches over, with no edits.
  • Built-in and own-key models live side by side, so one workflow can use Murmurator AI for one step and your own OpenAI key for another.
  • Saving a workflow fails if a step names a model the account doesn't have.

Only owners and admins can add, rename or remove models.

Murmurator AI

Built-in Claude models, no provider account needed. Add them under AI models → Murmurator AI with Use; each becomes a named model (sonnet by default, which you can rename).

Model Best for Input Output
Claude Fable 5.1 The hardest reasoning and long agent work $13.00 $65.00
Claude Opus 5.5 Deep analysis, careful reviews, multi-step agents $5.20 $26.00
Claude Sonnet 5 The balanced default for most steps $2.60 $13.00
Claude Haiku 4.5 Classification, extraction and summaries $1.30 $6.50

Prices are per 1 million tokens; cached input is billed at a reduced rate. Current rates are always on the pricing page.

How metering works:

  • Every model response in a step is recorded with its input and output tokens and its price, linked to the run and step. See it under AI models → Usage & limits.
  • Trial accounts get free credit, used before anything is billed.
  • Subscribed accounts have a monthly spend limit — $100 unless an owner changes it. When the month's usage reaches it, steps using Murmurator AI fail with a message explaining why, until the limit is raised or the month resets (on the 1st, UTC).
  • Usage is billed monthly in arrears on the same invoice as your subscription. See Billing & usage.

Your own providers

Add a provider once under AI models → Your providers with its API key, then add models from it with the provider's model ID:

Provider Example model IDs
Anthropic claude-sonnet-5, claude-haiku-4-5
OpenAI gpt-5, gpt-5-mini
Google Gemini gemini-3-pro
OpenRouter anthropic/claude-sonnet-5 and hundreds more
Mistral, DeepSeek, xAI The provider's model IDs
Ollama Any model on your server (set the API base URL)

Keys are encrypted at rest and never shown again after saving. An optional API base URL supports gateways and proxies. Calls go straight to your provider under your terms, and Murmurator never adds a markup.

For Ollama, set the API base URL to your server, such as https://ollama.example.com (Murmurator adds /v1 for you). Ollama's default context window of 4,096 tokens is too small for agent steps and the assistant, so raise it with OLLAMA_CONTEXT_LENGTH (16,384 or more) or a model's num_ctx parameter. When a model runs out of room, the step fails with an error saying so.

A model you host yourself can do everything a hosted one can: llm and agent steps, the assistant, and the coding agent in a workspace. The coding agent asks the most of it — thousands of tokens of instructions every turn — so give it your largest context window and expect it to take minutes rather than seconds.

How models are used in runs

  • llm steps send one request. With a schema, the model must reply with JSON matching it, available as output.data.
  • agent steps send a request per turn and call tools between turns, so they use more tokens — max_iterations caps how many turns they take.
  • Each step's log names the model it used, and the run records token totals.
  • A step fails with a clear error if its model isn't configured, a provider rejects the request, or a Murmurator AI limit is reached. See Runs.

Choosing a model:

  • Start with Sonnet (or your provider's equivalent) for reviews, summaries and agents.
  • Use Haiku for high-volume classification, extraction and short summaries.
  • Save Opus and Fable for steps where quality clearly matters more than cost, such as complex analysis or long agent loops.

The workflow assistant

The assistant that builds your workflows uses your account's default model. If the account has no models yet, it runs on Murmurator AI's built-in model.

Either way, the assistant is included in your plan and is never billed as Murmurator AI usage, even when the default is a Murmurator AI model. A generous monthly fair-use allowance applies. If your default model uses your own key, your provider bills you for those tokens as usual.