OpenRouter
Hosted unified API to hundreds of LLMs from many providers, billed via prepaid credits with a fee on credit purchases.
One OpenRouter account gives you access to models from many providers. Token prices match provider list rates, but buying credits adds 5.5%, or 8% on Business. Bringing your own keys is free for the first $25,000/month of list-price inference, then costs 5%. EU in-region routing needs Business or Enterprise, so include the higher fee when comparing EU options.
- Headquarters
- 馃嚭馃嚫 United States
- Parent jurisdiction
- 馃嚭馃嚫 United States
- EU self-serve plan
- Available; check eligible plans and regions
- GDPR DPA
- Yes
- Billing
- payg
- Free tier
- Free models available; no monthly fee, pay-as-you-go credits.
- Open source
- No
- Website
- openrouter.ai
- Source last checked
- 2026-10-06
- Pricing evidence
- Published rates
Pricing
Calculated from the listed vendor rates; exclusions still apply. How to read these estimates.
| Plan | Model-spend fee (%) |
|---|---|
| Standard credits | 5.5 |
| Business credits | 8 |
Allowances, plan limits & calculation details
Rates are shown at their recorded precision. A zero means no charge in this calculation; the vendor may charge for things we leave out. See the notes for usage assumptions and currency conversions.
Standard credits
- EU residency on this plan
- No
- Base fee / month
- $0
- Model-spend fee (%)
- 5.5
- Bring your own provider keys
- Yes
Business credits
- EU residency on this plan
- Yes
- Base fee / month
- $0
- Model-spend fee (%)
- 8
- Bring your own provider keys
- Yes
5.5% platform fee on credit purchases (Standard); 8% on the Business plan. Model tokens are passed through at provider list price. BYOK: first $25,000/month of list-price inference has no fee, 5% after. EU in-region routing (eu.openrouter.ai) is limited to Business and Enterprise plans. DPA published at openrouter.ai/data-processing-agreement.
Managed alternatives
At $10,000 model spend / month. Adjust usage and requirements.
OpenRouter: $6,600/yr estimated.
- Vercel AI Gateway: $0/yr estimated 路 $6,600/yr bill differencePublished rates
- Portkey: $588/yr estimated 路 $6,012/yr bill differenceModeled ratesShows the base Production fee only; logged-request overages are not modeled by the model-spend input.
- Helicone: $948/yr estimated 路 $5,652/yr bill differenceModeled ratesShows the subscription fee; request, storage and other usage-dependent extras are not modeled by the model-spend input.
- Cloudflare AI Gateway: $6,000/yr estimated 路 $600/yr bill differenceModeled ratesUnified Billing fee only; BYOK avoids it. Log storage and Logpush overages are excluded.
- Requesty: $6,000/yr estimated 路 $600/yr bill differencePublished rates
No cheaper managed estimate matches your filters. Adjust your usage or compare with your actual contract bill.
The price difference leaves out migration costs, operating costs and any features you鈥檇 need to replace.
Self-hosted options
Operating cost is not estimated. These options are not counted as savings against managed services.
Compare OpenRouter
Found a wrong rate or plan restriction? Report a correction with a current source.