Make your first call

Ballast speaks the OpenAI chat API. If you have called OpenAI before, you already know most of this. There are four steps.

1. Sign in

Go to Sign in and use Google, GitHub or an emailed link. There are no passwords.

2. Add credits

Open Billing and pick $5, $20 or $100, or type your own amount from $5. One credit is one cent. Checkout runs in Stripe test mode, so use the test card 4242 4242 4242 4242 with any future date and any CVC. No real charge is made. Your balance goes up within a few seconds.

Credits cannot be refunded.

3. Create a key

Open API keys, name the key and tick the box that says you know your prompts run on community GPUs (more in Trust and privacy). Ballast shows the key once and it starts with bl_. Copy it now. We keep only a hash and the last four characters, so a lost key cannot be shown again. You can have up to 10 keys.

4. Send a request

curl https://ballast.outerscope.xyz/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BALLAST_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"model": "qwen3-14b", "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Say hello in five words."}]}'

The reply is the usual OpenAI JSON. The text is in choices[0].message.content, and usage holds the token counts you were billed for. The values below are an example.

{
  "id": "chatcmpl-3f9c0b6e5d2a4c7f8a1b",
  "object": "chat.completion",
  "created": 1794096000,
  "model": "qwen3-14b",
  "choices": [
    { "index": 0, "message": { "role": "assistant", "content": "Hello there, nice to meet you." }, "finish_reason": "stop" }
  ],
  "usage": { "prompt_tokens": 15, "completion_tokens": 8, "total_tokens": 23 }
}

Next, point an official SDK at Ballast in OpenAI SDK in Python and JavaScript, or read the reply as it is written in Streaming.