OpenRouter pricing explained: the 5.5% fee by top-up size, free models and BYOK

OpenRouter pricing has two parts. Tokens bill at each provider's own price, passed through with no markup, and a platform fee lands when you buy credits: 5.5% on the Standard plan with a $0.80 minimum, 8% on Business and 5% on crypto (its pricing page and FAQ, read 2026-10-22). So $100 of credit costs $105.50 on a card, and $10 costs $10.80.

This post works the fee at six top-up sizes, lists the free-model limits and the 18 free ids in OpenRouter's model list on 2026-10-22, prices the bring-your-own-key allowance, and puts the same $100 next to a key priced under list. For OpenRouter against the other gateways, see OpenRouter and eight alternatives ranked by the fee on top.

OpenRouter sells prepaid credit in US dollars. Each request deducts its token cost from the balance at the model's posted rate, and that rate is the same on every plan. What changes by plan is the fee on the credit, the limits and the team features.

Its pricing FAQ answers the markup question directly: inference is billed at the provider's list price on every plan, and the fee is charged when you buy credits, never on individual requests. A failed attempt is not charged for its tokens, so with fallback routing you pay only for the run that answers.

For Claude, GPT and Grok the provider is the developer, so the OpenRouter rate is the price on Anthropic's pricing page or OpenAI's pricing page. Open-weight models such as DeepSeek and GLM run on several providers, and OpenRouter's model list showed some of them under the developer's own API price on 2026-10-22.

Business costs more per purchase and adds EU and US in-region routing, 1,000 workspaces against 5, and advanced notifications. Enterprise adds invoicing, SSO, contractual SLAs and a dedicated support team. Taxes come on top where they apply.

Below $14.55 the $0.80 minimum is larger than 5.5%, so small top-ups pay more. A $10 purchase pays 8.0%, the same rate as Business. From $20 up the card fee is a flat 5.5%.

The fee is part of the purchase, not of the usage, and it does not come back. OpenRouter refunds unused credit within 24 hours of the purchase, keeps the platform fee, and never refunds crypto. Unused credit may expire a year after purchase. Auto top-up buys credit when the balance falls under a threshold you set, and each automatic purchase pays the same fee.

Requesty charges its 5% on each request's model cost instead, and Cloudflare's Unified Billing adds 5% to the credit. The Requesty alternatives page works one coding month on both rules.

On OpenRouter, $100 of credit costs $105.50 by card and buys tokens at the developer's list price. On UplinkSwitch, $100 of credit costs $100 and buys tokens at the live catalog rate, under list on 58 of the 75 chat models with a list price.

A steady coding month makes it concrete. 150 turns a day for 20 working days, each turn 80,000 cached, 2,000 input and 1,500 output tokens on Claude Sonnet 5.5, is $81.00 at Anthropic's list. On OpenRouter that needs $85.46 of card purchases; here it is $38.80. The Claude Code pricing post turns the same shape into light and heavy months.

The model behind each id is checked, not assumed. The daily real-model check sends every model the same prompt and publishes the verdict (230 of 269 stable at the last run), and every non-streamed answer carries a signed receipt that statements/verify checks in the browser. The term-by-term version of this comparison is UplinkSwitch vs OpenRouter.

Free models cost nothing per token and carry their own caps: 20 requests a minute and 50 a day, rising to 1,000 a day once the account has bought $10 of credits. Failed attempts count toward the daily cap, and a negative balance blocks free models until you add credit. The Free Models Router, openrouter/free, picks a free model for each request.

The pricing page says 25+ free models. In the public model list on 2026-10-22, 18 ids ended in :free:

A free id and its paid twin are separate rows in that list. When an app outgrows 50 or 1,000 requests a day it moves to the paid id, at the provider's price plus the credit fee. For roleplay front ends that started on free models, the OpenRouter alternative for Janitor AI prices 100 messages on the paid builds instead.

With your own provider keys, the provider bills you for inference directly and OpenRouter charges no fee on the first $25,000 of list-price inference a month, on Standard and Business. Above that it charges 5% of what the same model and provider would cost on OpenRouter, taken from your OpenRouter credits. Enterprise allowances are custom.

A team running $40,000 a month of list-price usage through its own keys pays the providers $40,000, then 5% of the $15,000 over the allowance, which is $750.00 in OpenRouter credits. Under the allowance, routing your own keys through OpenRouter costs the same as calling the providers direct.

Self-hosting a gateway is the other way to keep your own keys with no fee. The OpenRouter vs LiteLLM comparison works out when a server costs less than the 5.5%.

For Claude, GPT and Grok, no. OpenRouter bills the developer's list price, the same as going direct, then adds 5.5% to the credit. $1,000 of usage at list costs $1,055.00 through OpenRouter and $1,000 at the developer. For open-weight models it can be cheaper, because competing hosts set those prices, and the free models cost nothing up to their caps.

Paying less than direct for the same closed model takes a gateway that prices under the developer's list. On 2026-10-22, 58 of the 75 chat models with a list price sit under it here on input and output, Claude Sonnet 5.5 at $1.20 in and $3.00 out against Anthropic's $2.00 and $10.00. Credit is prepaid from $10 with no fee on the top-up, and each top-up locks your rates for 30 days.

The arithmetic has three steps. Multiply your monthly input and output tokens by each model's rate per million. Add 5.5% for the credit that pays for it, or 8% on Business. Round the purchase up to the top-up sizes you actually buy, since a run of small purchases pays the $0.80 minimum each time.

Cached input lowers the first step. Coding agents re-send the whole conversation on every turn, so most of their tokens bill at the cached rate, and the model pages here list it next to input and output. The LLM API pricing comparison and calculator prices your own token counts at list and here, and the price index has every chat model's rate as JSON and CSV.

Is OpenRouter worth using? For breadth, yes: 468 ids in its public model list, 500+ models from 80+ providers on its pricing page, free models to try, and per-request provider choice (read 2026-10-22). The cost is the fee: 5.5% on every card purchase of credit, 8% on Business. If you call a handful of Claude or GPT models, the same tokens cost 5.5% more than direct, and a gateway priced under list costs less than either. See the OpenRouter alternatives compared by fee.

Is it cheaper to use OpenRouter? Usually not for Claude, GPT or Grok. OpenRouter bills those at the developer's list price, the same as going direct, then adds 5.5% when you buy the credit, so $1,000 of usage costs $1,055.00. It can be cheaper for open-weight models, which it routes to competing hosts, and for the free models. Your own keys within the $25,000 monthly allowance cost the same as direct.

Do I have to pay for OpenRouter? Not to start. The Free plan has 25+ free models at 20 requests a minute and 50 a day, and every new user gets a small free allowance (pricing page and FAQ, read 2026-10-22). Paid models need credit, bought with the fee on top.

How much can I use OpenRouter for free? 50 free-model requests a day at up to 20 a minute, rising to 1,000 a day once the account has bought $10 of credits. Failed attempts count toward the daily cap, and a negative balance blocks the free models until you add credit (pricing page, read 2026-10-22).

Is there an OpenRouter promo code? Its pricing page and FAQ name none (read 2026-10-22). What they list instead: a small free allowance for new users, the free models, $25,000 a month of your own-key usage with no fee, and fee discounts on Enterprise. The FAQ says OpenRouter does not discount inference and offers no volume discounts.

What does OpenRouter charge on crypto? 5% of the purchase, against 5.5% with a $0.80 minimum on a card (FAQ, read 2026-10-22). Crypto purchases are never refundable; card purchases can be refunded within 24 hours, without the platform fee.

Do OpenRouter credits expire? Its FAQ says OpenRouter reserves the right to expire unused credits one year after purchase (read 2026-10-22). Prepaid credit on UplinkSwitch has no expiry in the terms; top-ups are not refundable. See the UplinkSwitch terms.

OpenRouter is a trademark of its owner. This post quotes its pricing page, FAQ and model list as read on 2026-10-22. Our figures come from the live catalog, the daily check at /proof and the terms. Get a key: prepaid from $10, no subscription, 30-day price lock, in the console.