Skip to main content

Chutes Provider Guide

Chutes is a Tier-2 catalog provider: OpenAI-wire-compatible with no behavioural quirks, so its entire integration is one JSON file (src/lib/providers/catalog/chutes.json) rather than hand-written code. That file is the source of truth for everything on this page.

Verification status: docs- and roster-verified, not yet live-verified. This entry was onboarded credential-free — every fact below comes from an unauthenticated GET /v1/models call and Chutes' own public docs/pricing pages, never from a request made with an API key. No POST request of any kind was sent to Chutes. That means capability flags (tools, structured output, vision), error-message shapes and the billing policy are the vendor's own documentation, not a NeuroLink live probe — see Verification status below, and re-run the live-verification steps in Tier-2 onboarding with a real key before relying on this provider for anything that needs proven behavior (e.g. structuredOutputWithTools, which is left false here specifically because no combined tools+schema probe was possible).

Key Facts​

  • Provider id: chutes
  • Protocol: OpenAI-compatible (/chat/completions) — confirmed via Chutes' own homepage Python code sample, which posts to https://llm.chutes.ai/v1/chat/completions with model, messages, an Authorization: Bearer $CHUTES_API_KEY header, and stream: true.
  • Base URL: https://llm.chutes.ai/v1
  • Default model: moonshotai/Kimi-K2.6-TEE
  • Models in catalog: 14 — all TEE (confidential-compute) entries from the public roster at the time of writing
  • Streaming: documented (Guides → Streaming, Examples → Streaming Responses; the homepage sample itself streams)
  • Tool calling: documented, model-dependent — most catalog entries list tools in their supported_features, but two roster ids (unsloth/Mistral-Nemo-Instruct-2407-TEE, Nemotron-3-Nano-Omni-30B-TEE) report no feature list at all, so capabilities.tools is "model-dependent" rather than a flat true
  • Structured output: documented — response_format: {"type": "json_object"} is shown in Chutes' function-calling guide as a JSON-mode alternative to tool calls; most catalog entries also list json_mode / structured_outputs in supported_features
  • Structured output + tools together: not documented as combined and not probed (no key was used) — structuredOutputWithTools is false
  • Embeddings: not confirmed on the standard /v1/embeddings path in the public docs (there's an "Embeddings" example and a TEI template, but no documented general-purpose endpoint) — left false
  • Vision: model-dependent — 6 of 14 roster ids declare image (two also video) in input_modalities; see the Models table
  • Billing: no-free-tier (recorded conservatively — see Billing below)
  • Key format: keys are issued with a cpk_ prefix (Authorization: Bearer cpk_...); X-API-Key is documented as not a supported auth scheme

Quick Start​

1. Get an API key​

  1. Visit: https://chutes.ai/signup and create an account (pick a username; sign up with Google, GitHub, or optionally link a Bittensor wallet — no card is asked for on this page)
  2. Manage billing and create API keys at https://api.chutes.ai (account/billing/API-key management is a separate host from the inference API)
  3. Review current token pricing at https://chutes.ai/pricing before making requests — pay-as-you-go per token (USD per 1M tokens) plus optional paid Plus/Pro plans; no free trial credits are documented, so budget for a funded account from the first call
  4. Set CHUTES_API_KEY in your .env file — keys are issued with a cpk_ prefix and must be sent as Authorization: Bearer CHUTES_API_KEY

2. Configure​

export CHUTES_API_KEY=cpk_your-api-key
export CHUTES_MODEL=moonshotai/Kimi-K2.6-TEE   # optional — overrides the default model
export CHUTES_BASE_URL=https://llm.chutes.ai/v1   # optional — self-hosted or proxy

3. Use it​

import { NeuroLink } from "@juspay/neurolink";

const neurolink = new NeuroLink();

const result = await neurolink.generate({
  input: { text: "Explain context windows in one paragraph." },
  provider: "chutes",
  model: "moonshotai/Kimi-K2.6-TEE",
});

console.log(result.content);
# CLI
npx @juspay/neurolink generate "Hello" --provider chutes

Per-request credentials work as they do for every provider:

await neurolink.generate({
  input: { text: "Hello" },
  provider: "chutes",
  credentials: { chutes: { apiKey: process.env.CHUTES_API_KEY } },
});

Models​

All context/output figures and pricing below are read directly from the vendor's own unauthenticated GET https://llm.chutes.ai/v1/models response (re-run 2026-09-28, HTTP 200, 14 models) — never invented. Where a field was absent from that response (two entries below), it is left blank rather than guessed.

ModelContextMax outputVision$/M in · out (cached in)Notes
moonshotai/Kimi-K2.6-TEE ⭐262,14465,535yes (image, video)$0.50 / $2.85 ($0.05)Default — the model in Chutes' own homepage chat/completions code sample. json_mode, structured_outputs, tools, reasoning documented.
moonshotai/Kimi-K3-TEE1,048,57665,535yes (image, video)$3.00 / $15.00 ($0.30)Largest context window in the roster; same documented feature set as the default; fallback.
deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731-TEE1,048,576131,072no$0.44 / $1.32 ($0.044)Largest documented max output in the roster; text-only; fallback.
zai-org/GLM-5.2-TEE1,048,57665,535no$1.25 / $3.95 ($0.125)Text-only; fallback.
Qwen/Qwen3.5-397B-A17B-TEE262,14465,536yes (image)$0.45 / $3.00 ($0.045)MoE model; fallback.
Qwen/Qwen3.6-27B-TEE262,14465,536yes (image)$0.30 / $2.00 ($0.03)Fallback.
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B-TEE262,14465,536yes (image)$0.24 / $2.20 ($0.024)Fallback.
Qwen/Qwen3-235B-A22B-Thinking-2507-TEE262,144262,144no$0.2989 / $1.1957 ($0.0299)Reasoning-focused variant; max output equals the full context window, so give it a generous token budget.
deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.2-TEE131,07265,536no$1.00 / $1.00 ($0.10)Fallback.
zai-org/GLM-5.1-TEE202,75265,535no$0.98 / $3.08 ($0.098)Prior GLM generation; fallback.
google/gemma-4-31B-turbo-TEE131,07265,536yes (image)$0.12 / $0.37 ($0.012)Roster reports a larger 262,144 max_model_len; context_length (131,072) is used as the documented context window.
Qwen/Qwen3-32B-TEE40,96040,960no$0.104 / $0.416 ($0.0104)Smallest context window in the roster; fallback.
unsloth/Mistral-Nemo-Instruct-2407-TEE——no$0.0245 / $0.0978 ($0.0024)Cheapest model in the roster; only max_model_len (131,072) is documented — context/output/vision/feature fields are absent, so they're left blank here rather than guessed.
Nemotron-3-Nano-Omni-30B-TEE——no$0.0245 / $0.0978 ($0.0024)Same undocumented-field pattern as Mistral Nemo above. The "Omni" name suggests multimodal support, but nothing in the public roster confirms it, so vision is left false rather than inferred from the name.

Context window shown is the catalog default of 262,144 tokens (the default model's own context window); the default max output is 65,535 tokens (moonshotai/Kimi-K2.6-TEE's documented max_output_length).

Fallback order when the default is unavailable: moonshotai/Kimi-K3-TEE → deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731-TEE → zai-org/GLM-5.2-TEE → Qwen/Qwen3.5-397B-A17B-TEE → Qwen/Qwen3.6-27B-TEE → Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B-TEE → Qwen/Qwen3-235B-A22B-Thinking-2507-TEE → deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.2-TEE → zai-org/GLM-5.1-TEE → google/gemma-4-31B-turbo-TEE → Qwen/Qwen3-32B-TEE → unsloth/Mistral-Nemo-Instruct-2407-TEE → Nemotron-3-Nano-Omni-30B-TEE.

Billing​

Chutes' pricing page shows pay-as-you-go token pricing ("No subscription, no minimum, no markup") plus two optional paid plans (Plus at $10/mo, Pro at $20/mo, each bundling a daily quota and a discount off PAYG rates), an Enterprise tier, and a per-second-billed "Private Chutes" dedicated-GPU option. A Bittensor-wallet TAO payment option is also offered alongside standard payment. The page's own FAQ asks "Is there a free trial?", but that answer was collapsed in every fetch of the page during this onboarding and could not be confirmed either way — nor does any other public page state that new accounts receive free credits. Signup itself (https://chutes.ai/signup) does not ask for a card, but that is not the same as confirming free usage. Given the absence of documented free credits, billingPolicy is recorded conservatively as no-free-tier. Treat this as unconfirmed rather than a claim that no free tier exists — verify directly in the Chutes console before onboarding a team on the assumption of either outcome.

Verification status​

Tier-2 onboarding normally requires a live-key capability sweep (docs/provider-integration/tiers/tier-2-catalog-entry.md, "Live verification"), gated by pnpm run verify:provider-onboarding. This entry was added under a credential-free onboarding pass instead: no Chutes API key was ever created or used, and no authenticated or POST request was sent to any Chutes endpoint. Everything below is either a public document or a single unauthenticated GET.

ProbeResult
RosterUnauthenticated GET https://llm.chutes.ai/v1/models, HTTP 200, 14 models, re-run 2026-09-28. /v1/models is itself documented by Chutes as a "public catalog (no key required)."
Wire shapeChutes' own homepage Python sample posts to https://llm.chutes.ai/v1/chat/completions with model + messages + Authorization: Bearer $CHUTES_API_KEY + stream: true — never executed here, only read.
Tools / structured outputConfirmed from docs only: the "Function Calling, Agents, and Tool Use" guide shows OpenAI-shaped tools/tool_choice/tool_call_id, and the same guide shows a separate response_format: {"type": "json_object"} JSON-mode example. No request combining both was found or attempted.
Auth failure shapeNot probed (would require a POST, which credential-free onboarding forbids) and not given verbatim in the docs, so errorRules is empty — NeuroLink's default error classifier handles this provider until a live probe supplies a documented shape.
Live capability matrixNot run. evidence.liveMatrix is null. Run npx tsx test/continuous-test-suite-provider-matrix.ts --provider=chutes with a real CHUTES_API_KEY before depending on this provider for tool calling, structured output, or vision in production.

Troubleshooting​

SymptomCauseFix
Requests hit an anonymous rate limit (HTTP 429)No token, or an invalid token, was sentSet CHUTES_API_KEY, and send it as Authorization: Bearer <key> — X-API-Key is documented as unsupported for inference calls
Model not foundThe roster changed since 2026-09-28Pick a current id from the unauthenticated GET /v1/models roster
Structured output silently dropped when tools are usedstructuredOutputWithTools is false — no combined probe was possibleThis is intentional pending a live-key check, not a bug; NeuroLink's runtime conflict retry drops structured output and retries rather than losing the turn
Unsure whether a specific model supports tools / JSON modecapabilities.tools is "model-dependent" — two roster ids ship no supported_features at allCheck the model's entry in GET /v1/models, or consult the Models table above

See also​