Core Concepts

Definitions of groups, account pools, and balance-based billing, and the stages at which a request can be rejected.

Terminology

Term	Meaning
Account Balance ￥	The billing unit is Chinese Yuan (CNY / ￥); requests deduct from your balance in real time
Group	A set of models with its own multiplier and capacity
Multiplier	The factor a group applies to a model's base price
Account pool	The set of upstream accounts a group maps to
Scope	Whether a key belongs to an individual or a team, which determines who pays
Composite key	A key bound to several groups, distinguished by prefix

Groups

A group determines the available models, the billing price, the protocol format it accepts, and the upstream accounts that serve the request.

An API key must be assigned to a group at creation. A regular key binds to exactly one group; use a composite key to use several at once.

The multiplier applies to a model's base price. Prices shown in the model marketplace already include it and are the final billing prices.

A group is a property of an API key and is unrelated to the account's subscription plan (Lite, Plus, Pro, and so on).

Groups That Need Attention

Some groups are still tied to one client. Claude Max特惠 is Claude Code only; other clients receive 403, see Error Codes. Read the group description in the model marketplace before choosing.

Account Pools

An account pool is the set of upstream accounts a group maps to. The Pro pool includes Pro models and may receive higher priority when the service is under load; otherwise it is no different from the Plus pool.

Account type determines whether certain features work. Forcing Fast Mode on requires an OpenAI or Anthropic platform account, and Anthropic accounts must use API key credentials; Bedrock, Vertex, and OAuth credentials are skipped silently.

API Keys

Scope determines who pays, cannot be changed after creation, and is switched from the top right of the API keys page.

Scope	Paid by	Available groups come from
Personal	You	Your own group entitlements
Team	The team owner	The owner's group entitlements

A regular key binds to one group at creation, and model IDs are written as-is.

Enabling Composite Key at creation binds 1 to 20 groups, each with its own prefix, and the group is selected per request via prefix/model-id. A single key handles requests across multiple groups.

Cost Calculation

A request is billed as input, output, and cache, based on actual tokens consumed × the final unit price (CNY / 1M tokens) of the model. Composite keys bill by the group matched by the prefix.

• Billing Unit: All pricing and deductions are in Chinese Yuan (CNY / ￥). 1 CNY = ￥1.00 balance, with no extra conversion rates.
• Deduction Order: Active subscription plan allowances are consumed first; regular balance is charged once plan allowances run out.

Fast Mode uses the high-priority tier and costs roughly twice the regular rate.

Where a Request Is Rejected

When a request fails, check in the following order:

Stage	What to check
Key	Exists, not disabled, not expired. Team keys also require both the member and owner accounts to be active and the team not suspended
Group resolution	Composite keys need a prefix on the model ID, and the prefix must exist in the mapping, otherwise COMPOSITE_KEY_* is returned
Model permission	Whether the model belongs to that group
Endpoint support	Composite keys do not support WebSocket / Realtime endpoints
Quota	Account balance, subscription allowance, and a team member's daily / weekly / monthly limit - any shortfall rejects the request
Upstream	Only after all of the above does the request reach the model provider

Flux does not offer embedding models.

For the status code and message behind each case, see Error Codes.

Related Pages

• Troubleshooting - locate a problem by symptom when a request fails
• Create API Key - pick a group and generate a key
• Billing - multipliers, subscriptions, and top-ups
• Composite Key - use several groups from one key
• API Endpoints - the address your client needs