OpenRouter · November 2026
OpenRouter pricing: what you actually pay
OpenRouter charges the provider’s list price per token, with no markup. It makes its money on a fee when you buy credits. Here’s what that comes to, what’s free, and when your own keys are the better deal.
Plans and fees from openrouter.ai/pricing and its docs, checked November 4, 2026. Model prices from OpenRouter’s API, November 8, 2026
Plans
| Free | Standard (pay as you go) | Business (pay as you go) | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fee on credit purchases | None | 5.5% | 8% | Discounts available |
| Models | 25+ free models | 600+ | 600+ | 600+ |
| Providers | 4 free providers | 80+ | 80+ | 80+ |
| Rate limits | 50 requests a day | From the provider | From the provider | Higher allowances |
| Your own keys (BYOK) | No | $25,000 a month free, then 5% | $25,000 a month free, then 5% | Custom |
| Prompt caching | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Budgets and spend controls | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Management API key | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Workspaces | 5 | 5 | 1,000 | Custom |
| EU or US in-region routing | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| SSO, contractual SLAs | No | No | No | Yes |
| Payment | – | Card, crypto and more | Card, crypto and more | Invoicing |
| Support | Community | Dedicated team |
From openrouter.ai/pricing. Business needs no contract or minimum spend: upgrade in settings, and you can downgrade 30 days later. Standard and Business have no monthly fee.
What the fee comes to
On the Standard plan, paying by card. We read the fee as added on top of the credits you buy.
| You buy | Fee | You pay | Effective fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| $5.00 | $0.80 | $5.80 | 16.0% |
| $10.00 | $0.80 | $10.80 | 8.0% |
| $20.00 | $1.10 | $21.10 | 5.5% |
| $50.00 | $2.75 | $52.75 | 5.5% |
| $100 | $5.50 | $106 | 5.5% |
| $500 | $27.50 | $528 | 5.5% |
| $1,000 | $55.00 | $1,055 | 5.5% |
Don’t top up in small amounts. The $0.80 minimum means any purchase under about $14.55 costs more than 5.5%: a $5 top-up pays 16%. Buying $20 at a time, or turning on auto top-up at a higher amount, keeps you at the headline rate.
List price vs what you effectively pay
| Model | Input /1M | With 5.5% fee | Output /1M | With 5.5% fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 5.5 | $4 | $4.22 | $20 | $21.10 |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | $2 | $2.11 | $10 | $10.55 |
| Claude Haiku 5.5 | $0.10 | $0.105 | $0.50 | $0.527 |
| GPT-6.1 Sol | $2 | $2.11 | $10 | $10.55 |
| GPT-6 Luna | $0.10 | $0.105 | $0.50 | $0.527 |
| Gemini 4 Argon | $2 | $2.11 | $10 | $10.55 |
| DeepSeek V4 Pro 0423 | $0.209 | $0.22 | $0.418 | $0.441 |
| Grok 4.7 | $2 | $2.11 | $6 | $6.33 |
Today’s prices. Every model is in the AI price index, and the LLM cost calculator works out a monthly bill.
When your own keys are the better deal
Worth it if you already have provider accounts, committed discounts or your own rate limits.
How BYOK bills
You add your own provider key, and the provider bills you directly. OpenRouter charges nothing on the first $25,000 of list-price inference a month, then 5% of what those requests would have cost at list price, taken from your credits.
A worked example
At $40,000 a month of inference, BYOK costs $750 (5% of the $15,000 over the allowance). Buying the same in credits costs $2,200 in fees. Under $25,000 a month, BYOK has no OpenRouter fee at all.
What’s free, and the catches
- Free models cost $0 per token, capped at 20 requests a minute and 50 a day. Buying at least $10 of credits raises the cap to 1,000 a day. OpenRouter’s pricing page says “25+ free models”; its API lists 15 free variants today.
- Failed attempts count toward the daily cap, and a negative balance blocks free models until you add credits.
- The Free plan has no prompt caching, budgets, spend controls or management API key.
- Some free endpoints may log prompts. Check the provider’s policy before you send anything private.
- Credits can expire a year after purchase. Refunds are possible for 24 hours, without the fee.
Related
OpenRouter pricing questions
Does OpenRouter charge a fee?
Yes, when you buy credits, not on each request: 5.5% with a $0.80 minimum on the pay-as-you-go plan, 8% on Business. OpenRouter’s docs list 5% for crypto payments. Prices exclude tax.
Does OpenRouter mark up model prices?
No. OpenRouter says inference is billed at the provider’s list price on every plan. The cost of using it is the fee on credits, so your effective price is about 5.5% above going direct.
Is OpenRouter free?
You can sign up for free and use free models, capped at 20 requests a minute and 50 a day, or 1,000 a day once you’ve bought at least $10 of credits. Paid models need credits. There are 15 models with a free variant in OpenRouter’s API today: see the list.
How much does BYOK cost on OpenRouter?
With your own provider keys, the provider bills you directly. Standard and Business include $25,000 of list-price inference a month with no OpenRouter fee. Past that, OpenRouter takes 5% of what the same request would cost at list price, from your credits. The Free plan has no BYOK.
Do OpenRouter credits expire?
They can. OpenRouter’s terms reserve the right to expire unused credits a year after purchase.
Can I get a refund on OpenRouter credits?
Within 24 hours of buying them, using the refund button on the Credits page. You get back the unused credits, not the fee. Crypto payments are never refundable.
Do failed requests cost money?
No. An attempt that errors isn’t charged for its model tokens, so with fallback you pay only for the run that answers. Services that already ran, like web search or file parsing, may still bill.
Is OpenRouter cheaper than using OpenAI or Anthropic directly?
On tokens alone, no: same list price plus the fee on credits. What the fee buys is one API and one bill for every model, automatic fallback between providers, and free models. If you only ever use one provider, going direct saves the 5.5%; BYOK gets you the routing without the fee.
Which plan do I need to track spend with a tool like Glow?
Pay-as-you-go. Spend dashboards need a management API key, and the Free plan doesn’t have one. Which key to create, and how to limit the risk.
See what you actually spend.
Connect OpenRouter and Glow shows your spend by model, API key and product, next to each product’s revenue, with the swap that saves the most.