ANSWERS / ENGLISH

Answers to the failures that cost money

Nine short guides for the problems we see most often. Each links to the longer Chinese page where one exists.

• Relay account suspended: what to check first
  Why relay accounts get suspended, how to appeal, and how to avoid losing your balance.
• API key leaked: revoke first, investigate second
  A concrete checklist for a leaked relay or provider API key, including billing checks and safe rotation.
• 401 invalid API key: the first five checks
  Why a valid-looking key is rejected, and how to isolate client configuration from a disabled key.
• Balance dropping faster than expected
  How to reconcile relay billing: tokens, retries, model mapping, and cache discounts.
• Configure Claude Code with a third-party relay
  The environment variables, a verification step, and the errors you will hit first.
• Is the relay swapping models? Test before you accuse
  Signals of model substitution and a repeatable way to collect evidence.
• insufficient_quota: balance, quota window, or wrong key
  How to tell an empty balance from a quota window that has not reset.
• 429 Too Many Requests: a practical backoff guide
  Separate client-side burst, relay group limits, and upstream overload, with a retry pattern.
• Relay returns 502 or 504: where the break is
  How to tell an upstream failure from a relay gateway timeout, and when retrying is safe.

Written and reviewed 2026-11-12. If you find an error, tell us.