Alex Atallah
Technical leadership
One API for 500+ AI models across 80+ providers — pay with credits that work anywhere, with automatic fallback when a provider goes down.
Paid·AI·API·Developer Tools·LLM
Paid·AI·API·Developer Tools·LLM
What is OpenRouter?
OpenRouter is a unified API for AI models: 500+ models from 80+ providers, including Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, Mistral, and Microsoft, all behind one OpenAI-compatible interface. Because routing is distributed, a failing provider falls back to another automatically, and edge infrastructure keeps latency low. Billing is credit-based rather than per-provider subscriptions, so the same balance works across every model, and custom data policies let you control which models and providers ever see your prompts.
It also surfaces live pricing and throughput per provider, so you can compare the real cost of the same model across hosts. The platform reports 200T+ monthly tokens, 10M+ users, and 250k+ apps built on it, including Replit, Hermes Agent, and Kilo Code.
Features
- 500+ models from 80+ providers behind one OpenAI-compatible API
- Automatic fallback to another provider when one fails
- Edge routing to keep latency down
- Credits that work across any model or provider — no per-vendor subscriptions
- Custom data policies controlling which models and providers see your prompts
- Live price and throughput comparison across providers for the same model
FAQs
Common questions about OpenRouter
How does OpenRouter pricing work?
You buy credits that work across any model or provider, instead of holding a subscription with each vendor. Per-token prices vary by model and are shown alongside each one.
Do I need to change my code to use it?
The API is OpenAI-compatible, so most integrations work by changing the base URL and key. Switching models is then a string change rather than a rewrite.
What happens if a provider goes down?
Requests fall back to another provider serving the same model automatically, which is the main reason teams route through OpenRouter rather than calling vendors directly.
Insights
Traffic and momentum for OpenRouter
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Videos
Official videos and tutorials for OpenRouter.
24 tutorials
What are alternatives to OpenRouter?
6 similar tools
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WaveSpeed
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Runware
Fast, low-cost AI inference API for image, video, and audio generation — run top models at scale without managing GPUs.
Team
The people behind OpenRouter
Chris Clark
Technical leadership
Louis Vichy
Technical leadership
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