OpenRouter
Series B
OpenRouter is a unified API and marketplace for 500+ AI models from 80+ providers.
Founded
2023OpenRouter is a unified API and marketplace for 500+ AI models from 80+ providers.
OpenRouter operates a unified, OpenAI-compatible API and gateway that gives developers access to hundreds of large language models from many providers through a single endpoint. Developers can route requests across text, image, audio, and video models, compare them side by side, and switch providers without changing integration code.
The platform sits between applications and model providers, handling routing, provider failover, cost and latency optimization, and usage tracking. It reports processing hundreds of trillions of tokens per month for millions of developers and serves as a launch surface for new model releases.
OpenRouter's core advantage is breadth: a single interface spanning hundreds of models across many providers means developers do not lock into one vendor. That neutrality lets them optimize for cost, latency, and quality per request, and to fall back across providers when one is down.
Its public usage leaderboard and routing telemetry give developers real-world signal about which models and providers are actually used, not just benchmark scores. Enterprise controls such as workspaces, spend management, guardrails, and zero-data-retention policies let organizations govern multi-model usage at scale.
OpenRouter is usage-based: developers buy credits and pay per token at provider pricing, with a platform fee applied when credits are purchased. There is no subscription or per-seat charge, and a free tier is available for some models.
Because pricing is passed through from the underlying providers, the margin comes from the credit platform fee rather than from marking up inference. This keeps effective model costs close to provider rates while funding the routing, reliability, and enterprise infrastructure.