OpenRouter pricing: what you pay on top of the model
Checked Nov 1, 2026 on OpenRouter’s official pages (sources below). Prices change often: confirm with the provider before you buy.
OpenRouter is a single OpenAI-compatible API for hundreds of language models from many providers. Its pricing has two parts: the model’s own token price, and OpenRouter’s fee, which is charged when you buy credits rather than on each request.
Below is how each plan bills, quoted from openrouter.ai/pricing and its FAQ. Per-model token prices are listed on each model’s page on openrouter.ai.
Plans and fees
- Standard (pay as you go)
- Fee5.5% on credit purchases
- How you payCredit and debit cards, AliPay, crypto (USDC)
- Notable limitsRate limits pass through from the providers; 5 workspaces
- Business (pay as you go)
- Fee8% on credit purchases
- How you payCredit and debit cards, AliPay, crypto (USDC)
- Notable limitsAdds EU and US in-region routing, advanced notifications, 1,000 workspaces
- Enterprise
- FeeSet by contract; fee discounts available
- How you payInvoicing and purchase orders
- Notable limitsSSO/SAML, contractual SLAs, dedicated support
Bring your own key (BYOK)
- Standard and Business
- Included BYOK usage$25,000 of list-price inference per month with no OpenRouter fee
- Above the allowance5% of what the same request would cost at list price on OpenRouter, deducted from credits
- Enterprise
- Included BYOK usageCustom
- Above the allowanceCustom
With BYOK, the model provider bills you for inference directly.
How the token price works
- No markup on inference. OpenRouter says inference is billed at the provider’s list price on every plan; its fee is taken when you buy credits, not per request.
- Failed attempts are not charged for model tokens, so with fallback routing you pay for the run that answers. Auxiliary services that already ran, such as web search or file parsing, may still be billed.
- Auto-routing (openrouter/auto) adds no fee: you pay the rate of whichever model serves the request.
- Streaming is billed the same per token as non-streaming.
- Price changes: if a model’s price changes, requests keep routing and are charged at the new rate.
Paying with crypto
OpenRouter accepts USDC for credit purchases on Standard and Business. Per its FAQ, crypto payments carry their own fee and are not refundable. OpenRouter sells credits; it does not take a per-call x402 payment, so we have no 402 price or daily check for it. If you want an LLM API your agent pays per request in USDC with no account, see the OpenRouter alternatives you can pay per call over x402.
OpenRouter pricing FAQ
Does OpenRouter mark up model prices?
No, according to its pricing page: inference is billed at the provider’s list price on every plan. OpenRouter’s fee is 5.5% on Standard and 8% on Business, charged when you buy credits, never on individual requests (checked Nov 1, 2026).
What is the difference between Standard and Business?
Per OpenRouter, the only billing difference is the fee on credit purchases (5.5% vs 8%). Business adds features such as EU and US in-region routing, Workload Identity Federation and up to 1,000 workspaces. Neither has a minimum spend or lock-in.
Can I pay OpenRouter with crypto?
Yes. Standard and Business accept credit and debit cards, AliPay and crypto (USDC) for credit purchases. Its FAQ says crypto payments carry a fee and are never refundable.
How does BYOK pricing work on OpenRouter?
With your own provider key, the provider bills you for inference. Standard and Business include $25,000 of list-price inference per month through BYOK with no OpenRouter fee; above that OpenRouter charges 5% of the list-price cost, deducted from your credits.
Sources (official pages, read Nov 1, 2026)
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