Swap models by changing one string, and fall back to another provider when one fails. OpenRouter routes requests to 500+ models from 80+ providers through one OpenAI-compatible API, with fallback to other providers when one fails. The Free plan lists 25+ free models from 4 free providers, chat and API access, activity logs and export, 5 workspaces and community support. Free models are capped at 20 requests a minute and 50 a day, rising to 1,000 a day once the account has bought at least $10 of credits. Paid models are billed at the provider's list price, and OpenRouter's fee is charged when you buy credits: 5.5% on Standard and 8% on Business. G2 shows 4.5 from 26 reviews, several marked incentivized, praising one API for many models and noting uneven provider reliability and low free rate limits. Trustpilot shows 1.5 from 68 reviews, with complaints about expired credits, account restrictions and slow support.
Free tier quotas
Free models
25+ free models from 4 free providers on the Free plan, with chat and API access
Free model rate limit
20 requests a minute and 50 requests a day, per the pricing FAQ
Raised daily cap
1,000 requests a day once your account has bought at least $10 of credits
Failed attempts
Count toward the daily cap, and a negative balance blocks free models until you add credits
Platform fee
None on Free. Standard charges 5.5% and Business 8%, applied when you buy credits
Workspaces
5 on Free and Standard, 1,000 on Business
Support
Community support on Free, email support on Standard and Business
Paid-model pricing
Billed at the provider's list price with no per-request markup. Errored attempts are not charged for model tokens
Bring your own key
Standard and Business include $25,000 of list-price inference a month through BYOK with no OpenRouter fee, then 5%
Not on the Free plan
Auto-routing and preferred vendor selection, budgets and spend controls, prompt caching, management API keys and advanced notifications
Last sniffed Oct 10, 2026. Always confirm on the official pricing page.
👍 Good boy
+One OpenAI-compatible API reaches 500+ models from 80+ providers. The pricing FAQ says migrating from OpenAI or Anthropic means changing the base URL and model names, and a G2 reviewer said they do not worry about integration changes when switching models.
+G2 shows 4.5 from 26 reviews. Reviewers praise trying and comparing many models in one place, and a reviewer who runs a software company said provider routing control makes experimenting cost-effective. Several of the reviews I read were marked incentivized.
+Inference is billed at the provider's list price on every plan. The FAQ says OpenRouter's fee applies when you buy credits (5.5% on Standard, 8% on Business), never on individual requests.
+Failed or fallback attempts are not billed for model tokens, so with fallback you pay only for the run that answers. Routing through openrouter/auto adds no fee.
+Paid models carry no plan-based rate limit from OpenRouter. The FAQ says limits there come from the provider, and fallback routing retries other providers automatically.
+Free models need no purchase to start. A G2 reviewer said they used free models for code generation and summarization tests.
+The FAQ says OpenRouter does not train on your data, provider-side retention can be disabled per account or request, and Zero Data Retention routing is available on every plan.
+Payment options on paid plans include cards, AliPay and crypto (USDC), and Standard and Business have no minimum spend and no lock-in.
👎 Watch out
−Trustpilot shows 1.5 from 68 reviews, mostly negative. An October 2026 reviewer said their credits expired and support refused three requests to restore them, and another October 21, 2026 review was titled 'No credit refunds. Fund at your own risk.' These are unverified reviewer reports, not terms I read.
−Account restrictions are a repeated Trustpilot theme. An August 2026 reviewer said their account was restricted before they could use it and that support took 4 weeks to reply with generic categories (terms violations, regional or sanctions compliance, provider restrictions). Another August 2026 reviewer said an account was banned after being hacked.
−Free models are tightly capped: 50 requests a day on the Free plan, 20 a minute, and failed attempts count toward the cap. r/openrouter threads complain that decent free models often return rate-limit errors, and one commenter said that happens when too many people use a free model at once and the provider reaches its cap.
−G2 reviewers who listed dislikes cited uneven model availability and response times that depend on the underlying provider, a wish for higher free-model rate limits, and a catalog so large it feels overwhelming to beginners.
−The Free plan has no budgets or spend controls, no auto-routing or preferred vendor selection, no prompt caching and no management API key. Those start on Standard.
−Paying for credits carries a fee on every purchase: 5.5% on Standard, 8% on Business. A July 2026 Trustpilot reviewer called the 5.5% appealing for occasional prompts but said verification and recharge emails never arrived.
−A September 2026 Trustpilot reviewer said models used through OpenRouter in their coding tool failed to read files or support tool calls, while the same model worked elsewhere. It is one report, and tool-call support depends on the model and provider.
The catch
The free part of OpenRouter is a short list of free models with a hard cap, not free credit for the full catalog. The pricing page and FAQ say free models are limited to 20 requests a minute and 50 a day, and that the daily cap rises to 1,000 once your account has bought at least $10 of credits. Failed attempts count toward that cap, and a negative balance blocks free models until you add credits. Every paid model is billed at the provider's list price, so using the 500+ model catalog means buying credits and paying a 5.5% fee on the purchase.
The pricing page does not say whether signing up needs a card, and it does not state a commercial-use rule for the free models, so I left both as unknown. Each free model also has its own provider terms and data policy, which the pricing page links to under model and provider policies.
Independent reviews are split. G2 shows 4.5 from 26 reviews, with several marked incentivized, and Trustpilot shows 1.5 from 68 with complaints about credit expiry, restrictions and support. Reddit threads in r/openrouter report 429 errors on free models. Treat the Trustpilot reports as unverified, but read the credit and account terms before you fund an account.
What’s included
✓OpenAI-compatible API for 500+ models from 80+ providers
✓Fallback routing between providers
✓25+ free models on the Free plan
✓Activity logs and export on every plan
✓Workspaces with their own keys, limits and activity
✓Per-key credit caps inside a workspace
✓Prompt caching on paid plans
✓Budgets and spend controls on paid plans
✓Bring your own key with a monthly fee-free allowance
✓Zero Data Retention routing on every plan
✓EU and US in-region routing on Business and Enterprise
✓Status page with uptime and incident history
Free tier value
Generosity
B
Estimated value
25+ free models at 50 requests a day, or 1,000 a day after buying $10 of credits
Feature parity
Standard adds auto-routing, budgets, caching. Business adds regional routing. Enterprise adds SSO.
Screenshots
HomepagePricing page
Paid plans
Standard, pay as you go
5.5% fee when you buy credits, 500+ models, auto-routing, budgets and spend controls, prompt caching, management API keys and email support. No minimum spend and no lock-in.
Business, pay as you go
8% fee when you buy credits. Adds advanced notifications, EU and US in-region routing, workload identity federation and up to 1,000 workspaces. You can upgrade from settings without talking to sales and downgrade 30 days later.
Enterprise, contact sales
Prepaid credits and annual commitments with invoicing, discounted OpenRouter fees, SSO/SAML, contractual SLAs, managed policy enforcement and a dedicated support team. OpenRouter does not discount inference.
Common questions
Does OpenRouter have a free tier?
Yes. The Free plan includes 25+ free models from 4 free providers, capped at 20 requests a minute and 50 a day.
How do I get 1,000 free requests a day?
The pricing FAQ says the free-model cap rises from 50 to 1,000 requests a day once your account has bought at least $10 of credits.
Does OpenRouter mark up model prices?
No. The FAQ says inference is billed at the provider's list price. The fee is charged when you buy credits, 5.5% on Standard and 8% on Business.
Am I charged for failed requests?
The FAQ says an attempt that errors is not charged for its model tokens, so with fallback you pay only for the run that answers.
Does OpenRouter train on my data?
The FAQ says no. Provider-side retention can be disabled for the account or per request, and Zero Data Retention routing is available on every plan.
Why do free models return 429 errors?
Free models share the 20 a minute and 50 a day caps, and Reddit commenters add that the provider behind a free model can reach its own capacity limit.
Change history
Checked October 22, 2026
Pricing page and FAQ read. G2 shows 4.5 from 26 reviews and Trustpilot 1.5 from 68. Card requirement and commercial-use terms for free models are not stated on the pricing page.
