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Historically acquisitions have never really been good for customers. Time for me to look for an OpenRouter alternative? At least they're also as easy to switch
by skeledrew 2mo ago
Historically acquisitions have never really been good for customers. Time for me to look for an OpenRouter alternative? At least they're also as easy to switch from as the model providers they proxy.
- PetahNZ 2mo agoI'm working on a SaaS where you can switch between different OpenRouters on the fly. /s
- Taikhoom10 2mo ago[flagged]
- atomicnumber3 2mo agoStripes founders aren't suits but they're just as eager to make money. Their payments business is low margin and they're hungry for anything higher margin they can attach.
- Taikhoom10 2mo agoWell, they should be motivated by profit, especially if they can create an integrated solution, the convenience means everybody wins.
- cowsandmilk 2mo agoYeah, Amazon didn’t let its low margin retail business prevent them from taking high margins in AWS. I’m not sure why it is assumed Stripe would stay low margin.
- Klonoar 2mo agoI don’t think you understand just how much money Stripe currently makes.
- christophilus 2mo agoDoesn’t make them high margin, though.
- Taikhoom10 2mo agoMargin is not necessarily important. You would much rather be Amazon and take 50% of e-commerce at a small margin than be a SaaS with 80 +, but your market is inherently tinier. Plus, the ads business built on top of retail is better than AWS and retail. AWS is great, but ads is higher margin, grows with retail, and is something you see across so many aggregators. https://s-1.vercel.app/posts/marketplaces-airbnb-future-founder/ https://s-1.vercel.app/posts/marketplaces-airbnb-future-foun...
- justinhj 2mo agoSame fear. At least it wasn't Google
- therealdrag0 2mo agoWhy look for an alternative before you’re affected in any way?
- skeledrew 2mo agoOne reason is to avoid a potential boiling frog scenario. I'm already in one with Android, but there are no viable - for me - alternatives (never touching Apple and mobile Linux isn't there yet) so I'm truly stuck. If there's a chance things may start changing at OpenRouter in such a way that months/years from now I'll look back and say "oh, how I wish I'd switched providers", I'd rather switch now just out of principle than be boiled.
- egorfine 2mo agoBecause it's more likely that not that I will be affected.
- dewey 2mo agoThere's basically no moat for OpenRouter, you can very easily switch them out to any other of these AI gateway companies.
- pmx 2mo agoBecause its near zero cost now and I can do it calmly. Later, if they start squeezing me I don't want to be doing it under time pressure.
- ljlolel 2mo agowhat are you looking for in an alternative? my site is the only end to end encrypted one TrustedRouter.com
- drbscl 2mo agoAFAIK there isn't currently a direct competitor, but your best bet is to setup your own LLM gateway, and add various providers to it (beyond the frontier labs, there are the open-weights hosters, like baseten, fireworks, etc) It's a pain to manage though, and that's what makes openrouter's service valuable to be fair
- htrp 2mo agoThis is one of those things that every engineer will be rushing to start a company for given that there is now a potential exit path. Openrouters suppliers (fireworks AI etc) are all in this same business
- janandonly 2mo agoThis is a good moment to mention ppq.ai.