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People may feel differently about the fee that OpenRouter takes, but I think the service they provide is worth the extra cost. Having access to dozens of model
by wiether 6mo ago
People may feel differently about the fee that OpenRouter takes, but I think the service they provide is worth the extra cost.
Having access to dozens of models through a single API key, tracking cost of each request, being able to run the same request on different models and comparing their results next to each other, separating usages through different API keys, adding your own presets, setting your routing rules...
And once you start using an account with multiple users, it's even more useful to have all those features!
Not relying on a subscription and having the right to do exactly what you want with your API key (using it with any tool/harness...) is also a big plus to me.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- pixel_popping 6mo agoExpect you don't have the right to do what you want with the API Key (see waves of ban lately, many SaaS services have closed because of it).
- embedding-shape 6mo agoUnless you provide some more details, at least outline what "do what you want" was in your case, this seems like just straight up FUD.
- himata4113 6mo agoopenrouter accepts crypto so might have been some money laundering involved for reselling dirty crypto for llm api. if that wasn't the reason, hey that's actually a great way to launder money (not financial advice).
- embedding-shape 6mo agoSo you pay OpenRouter with cryptocurrencies, which they accept as a payment method, and then what, they block your account because the cryptocurrencies you paid with came from some account on the blockchain associated with other stuff? Or what are you really saying here? I don't understand how that's related to "you don't have the right to do what you want with the API Key", which is the FUD part.
- himata4113 6mo agoYou pay openrouter with dirty crypto, then you have a business which simply resells openrouter giving you clean fiat. I think openrouter specifically only banned those kind of accounts since that's what I have observed from other comments / research. numlocked in this thread has explicitely said that they don't ban accounts for any of the reasons specified above which narrows down the scope to some form of broken ToS specifically around fraud and money laundering.
- embedding-shape 6mo agoAnd then you go on HN and post "you don't have the right to do what you want"? Yeah, FUD and good riddance if so.
- Vinnl 6mo agoThat was a different user who wrote that.
- embedding-shape 6mo agoYeah, I didn't mean them specifically, more a general "you".
- Vinnl 6mo agoAh fair enough.
- pixel_popping 6mo agoYou are not allowed to resell Openrouter as an API yourself, so for example if you make a service that charge per token, you can't use Openrouter API for that, this is specified in their ToS, so no, you can't do what you want, what FUD? Quote from their own TOS: access the Site or Service for purposes of reselling API access to AI Models or otherwise developing a competing service;
- therealpygon 6mo agoI agree with you in certain circumstances, but not really for internal user inference. OpenRouter is great if you need to maintain uptime, but for basic usage (chat/coding/self-agents) you can do all of what you mentioned and more with a LiteLLM instance. The number of companies that send a bill is rarely a concern when it comes to “is work getting done”, but I agree with you that minimizing user friction is best. For general use, I personally don’t see much justification as to why I would want to pay a per-token fee just to not create a few accounts with my trusted providers and add them to an instance for users. It is transparent to users beyond them having a single internal API key (or multiple if you want to track specific app usage) for all the models they have access to, with limits and logging. They wouldn’t even need to know what provider is hosting the model and the underlying provider could be swapped without users knowing. It is certainly easier to pay a fee per token on a small scale and not have to run an instance, so less technical users could definitely find advantage in just sticking with OpenRouter.
- BeetleB 6mo agoThe two things I like about OpenRouter: 1. The LLM provider doesn't know it's you (unless you have personally identifiable information in your queries). If N people are accessing GPT-5.x using OpenRouter, OpenAI can't distinguish the people. It doesn't know if 1 person made all those requests, or N. 2. The ability to ensure your traffic is routed only to providers that claim not to log your inputs (not even for security purposes): https://openrouter.ai/docs/guides/routing/provider-selection#requiring-providers-to-comply-with-data-policies#zero-data-retention-enforcement https://openrouter.ai/docs/guides/routing/provider-selection... It's been forever since I played with LiteLLM. Can I get these with it?
- napoleond 6mo ago> It doesn't know if 1 person made all those requests, or N. FWIW this is highly unlikely to be true. It's true that the upstream provider won't know it's _you_ per se, but most LLM providers strongly encourage proxies like OpenRouter to distinguish between downstream clients for security and performance reasons. For example: - https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/safety-best-practices#implement-safety-identifiers https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/safety-best-pr... - https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/prompt-caching#prompt-cache-retention https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/prompt-caching...
- vidarh 6mo agoI love Openrouter. The ability to define presets, and the ease of access is well worth the few vs. juggling lots of providers separately. I maintain a few subscriptions too - including the most expensive Claude subscription - but Openrouter handles the rest for me.
- r0fl 6mo agoLove openrouter I can use cheap models without having to have an api at a bunch of different providers and can use the expensive models when im in a pinch and am maxed out from claude or codex well worth the 5% they take
- spaniard89277 6mo agoYou can get the same with kilo gateway without the fee.
- abdusco 6mo agoIf you want to try a model quickly, you'll have to pay the original provider at least 5 USD. With OpenRouter, you can pay pennies. If you decide it's not for you, then you don't have to leave the rest of your deposit with the provider.
- _s_a_m_ 6mo agoDoesnt Copilot Pro+ does the same?
- windexh8er 6mo agoNot even remotely close.
- muyuu 6mo agoHave you tried Kilo? I'd like to hear from someone who has tried both to know how do they compare.
- wiether 6mo agoI went on Kilo's website and it's seems to be closing doors on what I'm already doing. My coding is done with OpenCode with an OpenRouter API Key. Going with KiloCode would be doing the same, but with some more layers. And given that I can't see the on-demand API pricing, I'm really not convinced on how it would be an improvement.