PromptProxy

Smart caching and rate-limit-bypass proxy layer for LLM APIs that cuts latency and token costs; indie developers pay per request or subscription. · LLM Infrastructure

DEAD SLOW · CAUTIOUS

5.8 ShipScore / 10

Strong time-leverage and scale; entry is brutal — free OSS gateways everywhere.

Condition: Only build if you own a defensible cache-hit advantage (TPM-aware dual-bucket limits, semantic/prefix caching that survives reordered docs and multi-turn) and sell to teams with real spend — not indie devs — and you drop 'rate-limit bypass' as the pitch.

Part I — The Verdict what the instruments read

01 — The ShipScore breakdown

Control

Entry barriers

Need

Time-freedom

Scale

What the five commandments measure

C — Control	Do you own the customer, or does a gatekeeper (an app store, an algorithm, one platform) stand between you and revenue? High = you hold the keys.
E — Entry	How hard is this to copy? High barriers protect you once in — but a well-loved incumbent means breaking in is expensive, and scores this low.
N — Need	Is demand proven with money, not vibes — verified rival revenue, funding, exit multiples, complaint volume? No market evidence caps this at 5.
T — Time	Can income detach from your hours? High = earns while you sleep; low = you bought yourself a job.
S — Scale	How far does it reach without linear cost? High = software margins to thousands of customers; low = growth means headcount.

ShipScore = the mean of the five, scored by Opus 5 on the evidence below — the same rubric for every idea, including the ones we generate ourselves. Inspired by MJ DeMarco's CENTS framework. Full rubric →

02 — The pace test — $1M/yr

At $50/mo (assumed category price), you need 1,667 subscribers for a $1M/yr pace.

Nearest tracked rivals on that curve:

LLM Gateway

$59k 71%

Part II — The Evidence the receipts, good and bad

03 — Rival scan — corpus tracks 1 similar

LLM Gateway

verified MRR $59k · CENTS 6.8 (trustmrr)

LiteLLM / nexos.ai / RouterFuel gateways — Already ship semantic+prefix caching and rate-limit handling; LiteLLM is free and default-installed.
LMCache — 10k+ stars OSS KV/prefix cache with 14x TTFT claims — your core value proposition, for $0.
Headroom (Netflix eng OSS) — ~30k stars compressing tool/RAG outputs 60-95%; commoditizes token-cost savings overnight.

04 — Demand evidence

05 — Risks

Providers ship native prompt caching (90% discounts already) — your savings layer shrinks to noise.
'Rate-limit bypass' framing invites ToS enforcement, key bans, or provider-level blocking.
Indie-dev ICP has near-zero WTP; savings on a $30/mo bill can't fund a subscription.
You sit on the critical request path: one outage or added latency and customers rip you out permanently.

06 — Kill switches — what kills this with one decision

OpenAI/Anthropic API terms and key policy — Explicit anti-rate-limit-circumvention enforcement or key-sharing bans makes the product unshippable.
Native provider-side prompt caching pricing — One pricing page update giving 90%+ cache discounts by default removes the reason to proxy.
LiteLLM/LMCache roadmap — A single OSS release adding TPM-aware limits plus robust semantic cache reduces you to a hosted wrapper.

Divergence available · Seeing the cracks? Spin the model — variations of this idea engineered to beat 5.8.

Part III — The Plan if you insist on proceeding

07 — What this scan can't tell you

Cannot tell whether your cache-hit rates beat OSS baselines on real production traffic mixes.
No Reddit signal and no funded-company tracking here — competitive density is likely understated.
Unknown whether the $59k MRR gateway earns from caching or from routing/observability/compliance.

Scores judge the market and business model — not your ability to execute. Verified MRR = independently tracked revenue; reviews/upvotes = platform-reported. Judged 2026-08-05.

08 — The wedge & the next step

Sell TPM/KV-aware admission control and cache-hit engineering to teams already burning $10k+/mo on tokens — measured savings, revenue-share or seat pricing, not an indie-dev proxy.

Cheapest next step: Take 20 real prompt logs from 5 teams spending >$5k/mo, replay them through LiteLLM+LMCache versus your caching logic, and show a hit-rate/cost delta before writing product code.

Not quite it? Spin the model

Business-model variations of this idea, engineered to beat 5.8 — different vertical, audience, model, or wedge. Same harsh scale.

Monitor this idea

Weekly re-scan against the live corpus. If the market moves this ShipScore by a point, or flips the verdict, you hear about it. Free while we're small.

One inspection a day, by email

App Radar scans TrustMRR, Product Hunt, AppSumo, the App Store, Reddit and X daily — momentum, beatable apps, funding heat.