OpenRouter pricing: fees and limits, September 2026
OpenRouter's own charge is a fee on buying credits: 5.5% by card with a $0.80 minimum, 5% in crypto, and a listed 8% on Business. It states model prices pass through with no markup.
OpenRouter’s own charge is a fee on buying credits. Its FAQ says model prices pass through at the provider’s rate with no markup, and that buying credits carries a 5.5% fee with a $0.80 minimum, or 5% when paying in crypto.1 Its pricing page lists an 8% platform fee on the Business plan and fee discounts on Enterprise.2 All figures are US dollars, checked 28 September 2026.
If the no-markup statement holds, that fee is the whole premium over direct provider billing. The $0.80 floor makes small top-ups dearer.
TL;DR
- The premium over direct billing is a share of credit purchases: 5.5% by card, 5% in crypto, a listed 8% on Business.1,2
- The $0.80 minimum makes a $10 top-up cost 8% and a $5 top-up 16%. Above about $14.55, the headline 5.5% applies.1
- Bring-your-own-key use is fee-free up to $25,000 of list-price inference a month ($200,000 on Enterprise), then costs 5%.2
- Free use means 25+ free models at 50 requests a day, or 1,000 a day after 10 credits are bought. Paid models inherit provider rate limits.2,1
- Credits can expire after a year; refunds close after 24 hours; platform fees are never refunded.1
- Verdict: for multi-model or fallback-dependent work, the fee buys one bill and one API. For one model at high volume, price direct billing against the 5.5% first.
How these figures were checked
Every OpenRouter figure here comes from its own pricing page and documentation FAQ, captured on 28 September 2026 for our model infrastructure coverage.2,1 One model price comes from OpenRouter’s models listing, captured the same day.3 Fee examples are computed from the stated percentages and minimum, with the inputs beside each result. Third-party figures are named where they appear, under the same sourcing rule as the rest of our published research.
These are company statements. They establish what OpenRouter says it charges, not what every account pays after tax or negotiation. The standard behind that distinction is set out in our research methodology.
What does each OpenRouter plan charge?
OpenRouter publishes four plans: Free, Standard (pay-as-you-go), Business (pay-as-you-go) and Enterprise.2 The charge the pricing page calls the Platform fees row is N/A on Free, 5.5% on Standard, 8% on Business and “Fee discounts available” on Enterprise.2
| Plan | Platform fee | Models and providers | Rate limits | Payment options | BYOK allowance per month | Cost controls |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | N/A | 25+ free models, 4 free providers | 50 requests/day | None listed | Not available | No budgets, no prompt caching |
| Standard | 5.5% | 500+ models, 80+ providers | Passthrough from the provider(s) | Credit card, crypto & more | $25,000 of list-price inference, 5% after | Budgets and spend controls, prompt caching |
| Business | 8% | 500+ models, 80+ providers | Passthrough from the provider(s) | Credit card, crypto & more | $25,000 of list-price inference, 5% after | Adds EU and US in-region routing, 1,000 workspaces |
| Enterprise | Fee discounts available | 500+ models, 80+ providers | Higher allowances available | Invoicing options | $200,000, 5% after | Adds SSO/SAML, contractual SLAs, dedicated support |
Source: OpenRouter pricing page, checked 28 September 2026. Figures in US dollars; tax treatment is not stated in the captured page.2
The plan changes the controls around spend more than the spend itself. Budgets and spend controls, prompt caching and auto-routing are marked “No” on Free and “Yes” on every paid plan.2
How are model prices passed through?
OpenRouter bills each request at the model’s listed price and deducts it from your credits. Its FAQ says pricing is shown per million tokens, usually with separate prices for prompt and completion tokens, and that some models charge per request, for images or for reasoning tokens.1 After a request, OpenRouter receives the token count the provider processed, calculates the cost and deducts it from the credit balance.1
The FAQ states that OpenRouter passes through the underlying providers’ pricing with no markup on inference, and makes its money from the fee on credit purchases.1 That is OpenRouter’s own claim. This check did not compare OpenRouter’s listed rates with each provider’s price page, so confirm the rate for your model on both before relying on parity.
A worked example shows where the fee sits. OpenRouter’s models listing showed Perceptron Mk1.5 at $0.15 per million input tokens and $1.50 per million output tokens on 28 September 2026.3 A workload of 10 million input tokens and 2 million output tokens therefore draws $1.50 plus $3.00, or $4.50, from credits. The fee was paid earlier, when those credits were bought: about $0.25 on $4.50 at the 5.5% card rate, if they came from a top-up large enough to clear the $0.80 minimum.1 Nothing further is added per request.
Three pricing levers sit inside the model catalogue. The :free variant is a free version of a model with its own rate limits, :batch is the batch-priced version, and :floor sorts providers by price.1 Accounts can also opt in to logging prompts and completions in exchange for a 1% discount on usage costs.1 What sets the token prices upstream is covered in our explainer on what controls AI inference cost.
What does the 5.5% credit fee cost in practice?
On Standard, the fee is 5.5% of each card purchase, with $0.80 as the floor.1 The minimum stops binding at $0.80 ÷ 0.055, about $14.55. Below that, the effective rate climbs.
| Credit purchase (USD) | Card fee at 5.5%, $0.80 minimum | Effective rate | Crypto fee at 5% |
|---|---|---|---|
| $5 | $0.80 | 16.0% | $0.25, minimum not stated |
| $10 | $0.80 | 8.0% | $0.50, minimum not stated |
| $50 | $2.75 | 5.5% | $2.50 |
| $100 | $5.50 | 5.5% | $5.00 |
| $1,000 | $55.00 | 5.5% | $50.00 |
| $10,000 | $550.00 | 5.5% | $500.00 |
Computed from the FAQ’s 5.5% fee, $0.80 minimum and 5% crypto fee, checked 28 September 2026.1
The decision changes with top-up size. An account that loads $10 at a time pays 8% for the same inference that a $100 top-up buys at 5.5%. Auto top-up, which refills the balance when it falls below a set threshold, runs on the same arithmetic: each refill under $14.55 pays the minimum.1
The Business figure needs care. The pricing page lists 8%, but the captured text does not include the answer to its own question, “What does the Business plan fee apply to?”2 If it applies to the same purchase base, a $1,000 purchase would carry $80. Confirm the basis with OpenRouter before modelling Business costs.
What does bring-your-own-key cost?
Bring-your-own-key (BYOK) is fee-free up to a monthly allowance, then costs 5%. OpenRouter measures that allowance by list-price inference cost, not request count: $25,000 a month on pay-as-you-go plans and $200,000 on Enterprise.1 Above it, the fee is 5% of what the same model and provider would normally cost on OpenRouter, deducted from OpenRouter credits.1
BYOK moves the provider bill and rate limits back to your own provider account while keeping OpenRouter’s interface.1 It does not remove the need for an OpenRouter balance, because the overage fee comes out of credits.
Take a Standard account running $40,000 of list-price inference through its own keys in one month. The first $25,000 carries no fee. The remaining $15,000 carries 5%, or $750, taken from credits.2 The same month on Enterprise stays inside the $200,000 allowance and carries no BYOK fee.2
What are the free and paid limits?
Free use is capped by requests, and paid use by the provider. The pricing page lists 50 requests a day for the Free plan.2 The FAQ sets free-model limits by credits purchased: 50 free-model requests a day, or 1,000 a day once at least 10 credits have been bought.1 OpenRouter’s credit system uses the US dollar as its base currency.1
OpenRouter describes the free models as having low rate limits and being “usually not suitable for production use”.1 New users also receive “a small free allowance” to test the service; the FAQ does not give its size.1
On Standard and Business, the rate limits are listed as “Passthrough from the provider(s)”. Enterprise lists “Higher allowances available”.2 When a provider returns an error, OpenRouter falls back to the next provider automatically.1
Plan limits also cover structure. Free and Standard allow 5 workspaces, Business 1,000, and Enterprise a custom number.2 Support runs from community support on Free to email on Standard and Business and a dedicated team on Enterprise.2
What happens to credits you don’t use?
Unused credits can lapse, and the refund window is short. OpenRouter reserves the right, under its terms, to expire unused credits one year after purchase.1 Refunds for unused credits must be requested within 24 hours of the transaction. The unused amount returns to the payment method, but platform fees are non-refundable and crypto payments are never refundable.1
Deleting an account loses its unused credits, and they cannot be reclaimed by recreating the account.1 The FAQ lists major credit cards, AliPay and USDC as payment methods, with PayPal described as coming soon.1 The expiry rule and the minimum fee point the same way: top up in amounts above $14.55 that will be spent within a year.
Why other published OpenRouter figures disagree
Third-party guides describe older or different terms. TrueFoundry’s guide, dated 25 August 2026, says the first 1 million BYOK requests each month are free on standard plans and 5 million on Enterprise.4 OpenRouter’s FAQ now measures the BYOK allowance in list-price dollars, $25,000 and $200,000, and states it is “not request count”.1
The same guide describes three tiers and 300+ models.4 The pricing page checked on 28 September 2026 shows four plans, including Business at 8%, and 500+ models.2 TrueFoundry’s guide also gives a $100 purchase as leaving about $94.50 for inference, which treats the fee as deducted from the credit.4 OpenRouter’s refund rule, which returns the unused credit amount but not the platform fee, reads as though the two are separate sums.1 The captured pages do not settle which way the fee is applied. TrueFoundry sells a competing AI gateway, which its guide promotes alongside the pricing analysis.4
For current figures, use the pricing page and the FAQ together.
What the published pricing does not tell you
Several cost terms were not resolved in the captured pages. The pricing page lists questions on whether taxes (VAT/GST) are included, whether failed or fallback attempts are billed, and what happens when a model’s pricing changes, but the captured text does not include their answers.2 The per-minute limit on free models, the size of the new-user allowance and the base of the Business 8% fee are also unstated in these pages.
Two statements sit in tension. The FAQ says OpenRouter “does not currently offer volume discounts” beyond a request by email for exceptional cases, while the Enterprise column lists fee discounts.1,2 Treat Enterprise pricing as negotiated.
This view would change if OpenRouter altered the Platform fees row, the $0.80 minimum or the BYOK allowance. Confirm each in the current pricing page before committing a budget.
Frequently asked questions
Is OpenRouter still free?
Yes, for free models. The Free plan carries no platform fee and offers 25+ free models from 4 free providers, capped at 50 requests a day.2 Paid models need purchased credits. Free variants use model IDs ending in :free, and the openrouter/free router picks a free model automatically.1
How many free requests do you get on OpenRouter?
Fifty free-model requests a day, or 1,000 a day once an account has bought at least 10 credits.1 TrueFoundry’s August 2026 guide also reports a limit of 20 requests per minute on the free tier; the OpenRouter pages checked for this piece give only the daily caps.4
Is OpenRouter worth using?
It depends on what the 5.5% buys you. OpenRouter’s case is one API across providers, one bill and automatic fallback when a provider errors.1 At $10,000 of card top-ups a month, the fee is $550.1 A team running several models, or depending on fallback, is paying for that. A team running one model at high volume can compare that sum with billing the provider directly, or use BYOK, which carries no fee up to $25,000 of list-price inference a month.2
Does OpenRouter offer volume discounts?
Not on standard terms. The FAQ says volume discounts are not currently offered, though exceptional cases can be raised by email.1 Enterprise lists fee discounts, and any account can take a 1% discount on usage costs by opting in to prompt and completion logging.2,1
Sources checked
Company-owned pages establish what a company says. They do not prove a market conclusion. Each source is dated so readers can judge each claim.
