OpenRouter

Unified API for all LLMs.

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About OpenRouter

If you've shipped anything on top of LLMs, you know the mess. One provider for your main model, another for cheap summarization, a third for speech, each with its own SDK, billing account, rate limits and outage schedule. When Anthropic or OpenAI has a bad afternoon, your app goes down with it, and switching models means rewriting request code and juggling separate invoices. OpenRouter exists to fix that. It puts 500+ models from 80+ providers behind one API key, one credit balance and one request format.

The pitch on openrouter.ai is short: "Better prices, better uptime, no subscriptions." In practice that means a fully OpenAI-compatible API, so existing code mostly needs a new base URL and key. You also get automatic fallback to other providers when one goes down, and edge-hosted routing meant to keep latency low. You buy credits that work with any model, from GPT and Claude to Gemini and the newly added ElevenLabs text-to-speech and speech-to-text models. Coverage spans text, images, video and audio. The scale is real: the site claims 600T+ monthly tokens and 10M+ users, and tools like Replit and Cline are featured as apps running on it.

The catch is the platform fee. The Free tier has no fee but caps you at 50 requests a day and limits you to 25+ free models. Pay-as-you-go Standard adds 5.5% on top of model costs, and Business adds 8%. For most teams that's a fair price for skipping multi-vendor plumbing and getting failover. At high volume, though, you'll want to do the math against going direct or running your own gateway. Features like prompt caching, budgets and spend controls, and EU or US in-region routing are all marked unavailable on Free, so serious production use means paying.

Key features

One API for 500+ models

You can call models from 80+ providers, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and ElevenLabs, through a single OpenAI-compatible endpoint and one API key.

Provider fallback

When a provider goes down, OpenRouter's distributed infrastructure falls back to another provider serving the same model, so your app keeps responding.

Shared credit balance

You prepay credits once and spend them across any model or provider, which replaces a stack of separate vendor invoices with one balance and no subscription.

Custom data policies

Fine-grained model and provider policies let your organization make sure prompts only go to the vendors you trust, with EU and US in-region routing available above the Free tier.

Server-side code execution tools

The openrouter:shell and openrouter:bash tools run model commands in OpenRouter's sandbox during the API request, so you don't have to provision or secure your own container for any model.

Multimodal coverage

Text, image, video and audio models all live behind the same interface, including 9 ElevenLabs text-to-speech and 2 speech-to-text models such as Eleven v4 and Scribe v2.

Best for

developers testing many models without signing up for each vendor
AI startups that need failover across providers
coding agents and apps that let you pick your own model
teams that want one bill for every LLM they use
prototyping on free models before committing spend

Skip if

Skip it if you run high, steady volume on a single model, since the 5.5% to 8% platform fee adds up versus going direct.
Skip the Free tier for anything beyond tinkering, because 50 requests a day and no budgets or spend controls won't hold up in production.
Skip it if you need a self-hosted gateway inside your own infrastructure, because OpenRouter is a hosted middle layer you depend on.

Pros & cons

Pros

Fully OpenAI-compatible API, so switching existing code over is mostly a base URL and key change.
Automatic fallback across providers gives you better uptime than betting on a single vendor.
Huge catalog: 500+ models across 80+ providers, including fresh additions like ElevenLabs at 50% off through October 19, 2026.
No subscriptions. Credits are pay-as-you-go and work with any model or provider.
Data policy routing and EU or US in-region options make it workable for teams with compliance requirements.

Cons

Paid usage carries a platform fee of 5.5% on Standard and 8% on Business, on top of model costs.
Free tier is capped at 50 requests/day, 25+ free models and 4 free providers, with no prompt caching or spend controls.
You add a dependency: OpenRouter sits between you and every provider, so its availability and policies become part of your stack.
The public pricing table spells out Free tier limits clearly but is thinner on exactly which features each paid tier includes, so you'll need to check docs or ask sales.

Pricing

Tier	Price	Includes
Free	$0, no platform fee	25+ free models, 4 free providers, chat and API access, activity logs and export, 50 requests/day, up to 5 workspaces, community support
Standard	Pay-as-you-go, 5.5% platform fee	Prepaid credits usable with any model or provider, billed at model cost plus the platform fee
Business	Pay-as-you-go, 8% platform fee	Pay-as-you-go access aimed at growing teams, upgraded from Standard
Enterprise	Contact sales	Platform fee discount and enterprise features, arranged through sales

Frequently asked questions

Is OpenRouter free to use?

Yes, the Free tier has no platform fee and gives you 25+ free models across 4 free providers. It's capped at 50 requests per day with community support only.

How much does OpenRouter charge on top of model prices?

Standard is pay-as-you-go with a 5.5% platform fee, and Business is pay-as-you-go with an 8% fee. Enterprise customers can negotiate a fee discount through sales.

Do I need to rewrite my OpenAI code to use it?

Mostly no. OpenRouter is fully OpenAI compatible, so you typically swap in your OPENROUTER_API_KEY and its endpoint and keep your existing request format.

What happens if a model provider goes down?

OpenRouter falls back to other providers serving the model, which is the main uptime advantage over calling OpenAI or Anthropic directly. With 80+ providers, there's often more than one host for popular models.

Can I control where my prompts are sent?

Yes, custom data policies let you restrict prompts to trusted models and providers. EU and US in-region routing and data policy-based routing aren't on the Free tier, so you'll need a paid plan.

How OpenRouter compares

OpenRouter vs OpenAI API (direct)

Going direct skips the 5.5% to 8% fee if you only use GPT models, but you lose provider fallback and access to Claude, Gemini and ElevenLabs under one key.

OpenRouter vs LiteLLM

LiteLLM is the pick if you want an open-source, self-hosted gateway with no platform fee, while OpenRouter wins if you'd rather not run infrastructure or manage separate vendor accounts.

OpenRouter vs Together AI

Together AI is strong for hosting open-weight models on its own infrastructure, but OpenRouter covers far more ground by routing to 80+ providers including the closed frontier labs.

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