AI Providers

AI providers are the services that power Fuser's executable nodes. Learn about available providers, their strengths, and how to choose the right ones for your workflows to balance cost, speed, and quality.

Why Use Multiple Providers?

Fuser connects directly to external AI providers, giving you several key advantages:

Best-in-Class Models: Different providers excel at different tasks. Use the best image, video, and text models from across the AI landscape in a single workflow.
Cost Optimization: Choose the most cost-effective provider for each specific task.
Flexibility: Easily switch between providers without rebuilding your workflow logic.
Latest Access: Get access to new and updated models as soon as they are released by the providers.

Recommended Providers

Start here. This combination covers most use cases with the lowest starting cost — bring keys for these two providers first, and add the rest later only when you need them:

Fal - The Media Generation Powerhouse

Fal specializes in Image, Video, Audio, and 3D generation, providing access to the latest models like FLUX, Luma, and Kling with fast performance and competitive, pay-per-use pricing. It's an excellent choice for all your media generation needs, offering a comprehensive suite of tools for content creation.

OpenRouter - The Model Marketplace

OpenRouter provides access to over 300 different text models, offering a huge selection of models including many free and open-source options, along with tools to compare costs. It's ideal for all your text and chat-based needs.

Direct Providers (Optional)

For specific use cases or when you need enterprise-grade reliability, you can connect directly to providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, Groq, DeepSeek, Cohere, and Perplexity for text; Civitai for image LoRAs; and Runway for video.

All Supported Providers

Fuser supports the following providers today. Bring your own API key for any of them, set in Settings → Providers.

Custom adapters vs. base passthrough

Four providers — Fal, Google, OpenAI, and Runway — have dedicated adapters in Fuser that surface provider-specific options (model variants, response shapes, fine-tuning, etc.). The other text/chat providers (Anthropic, Mistral, Groq, Cohere, Perplexity, DeepSeek, OpenRouter, Civitai) use a base passthrough — your key is forwarded to the provider's standard endpoints with default options. Both approaches work; just expect the dedicated-adapter providers to offer more in-app surface area.

Text & chat

OpenAI — GPT family. Reliable all-rounder.
Anthropic — Claude family. Strong on reasoning, long context, and code.
Google — Gemini family. Native multimodal, including video understanding.
Mistral — Mistral and Codestral models. Strong open-weight family.
Groq — Inference accelerator with very low latency on open-weight models.
DeepSeek — Open-weight reasoning and coding models.
Cohere — Command and embedding models, enterprise focus.
Perplexity — Online-search-augmented chat models.
OpenRouter — Marketplace fronting hundreds of text models including free and open-weight options. Useful for cost optimization and experimentation.

Image, video, audio, and 3D generation

Fal — Image, video, audio, and 3D generation. The full FLUX, Kling, Luma, and many other media-model families.
OpenAI — Image generation via the GPT Image family.
Google — Image and video generation via Gemini and Imagen.
Civitai — Image LoRAs and community-trained models.
Runway — Video generation.

The exact set of available models inside each provider changes frequently — check the provider dropdown in Settings → Providers for what's live today.

Choosing the Right Provider

For beginners: Start with Fal (for media) and OpenRouter (for text). This combination covers a wide range of use cases at low cost.
For content creation: Use Fal for high-quality images and video, and OpenRouter for cost-effective text.
For business and analysis: Connect to Anthropic or OpenAI directly, or route through OpenRouter, for tasks that need high accuracy and reasoning.
For low latency: Groq runs open-weight models at very low latency.
For experimentation: OpenRouter is the easiest way to compare many models without managing per-provider keys.

Cost Management

Pricing is determined by the providers, not Fuser. Understanding their models is key to managing costs.

Text Models are typically priced per "token" (roughly, a word). Longer inputs and outputs cost more. Generally speaking, text models are the very affordable. Average monthly costs are typically less than $1.
Media Models are often priced per generation, with factors like image resolution or video duration affecting the cost.

Video and 3D are Expensive

Video and 3D models are much more expensive than text and image models. Average cost per generation is typically $0.50. It's often a good idea to start with an image instead of trying different text prompts. This approach allows you to lock-in the style and content using images which are often:

Easier to describe: Image models are better at understanding and generating images from text descriptions.
Faster to generate: Image models can generate images much faster than video or 3D models.
Cheaper to run: Image models are many times cheaper to run than video or 3D models.

Once you have your image reference ready, you can use it as a starting point for the video or 3D model.

How to Optimize Costs

Use cheaper, faster models for testing and development.
Use smaller image resolutions or shorter video durations when iterating.
Make your prompts clear and concise to reduce token usage.
Use OpenRouter to find the most cost-effective model for your task.

Security and API Keys

Your API keys are your private credentials for these services.

Never share them publicly.
Store them securely in a password manager.
If you suspect a key has been compromised, revoke it immediately from the provider's dashboard and generate a new one.

For a detailed guide on setup and security, see Setting up API Keys.

What's Next?

Now that you understand the AI providers that power Fuser:

Setting up API Keys - Get your keys and connect them to Fuser.
Nodes Reference - Explore the specific nodes for these providers.
Building Flows - Start building workflows with your chosen providers.
Templates - See how different providers are used in pre-built workflows.

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