Disclosure: CodeRouter is our product, a router for coding agents. Everything below about OpenRouter comes from its pricing page and FAQ, checked on November 9, 2026. Prices and terms change; OpenRouter's pages are the source of truth.
OpenRouter's pricing has two parts: what the model costs, which OpenRouter passes through from the provider, and a platform fee on the credits you buy. Most questions ("is it free?", "is there a minimum?", "what does BYOK cost?", "does Auto Code cost extra?") come down to those two.
The plans at a glance
| Free | Standard (pay as you go) | Business (pay as you go) | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Platform fee | N/A | 5.5% | 8% | Fee discounts available |
| Models | 25+ free models | 600+ | 600+ | 600+ |
| BYOK | No | $25,000 of list-price inference a month with no fee, 5% after | Same as Standard | Custom |
| Rate limits | 50 requests/day | Passthrough from the provider(s) | Passthrough from the provider(s) | Higher allowances available |
| Auto-routing | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Budgets and spend controls | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| EU / US in-region routing | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| SSO (SAML) | No | No | No | Yes |
| Support | Community | Dedicated team |
From the comparison table on openrouter.ai/pricing, November 9, 2026.
1. Model prices: passed through, no markup
OpenRouter's pricing FAQ: "Inference is billed at the provider's list price on every plan." Its general FAQ says the same: "We pass through the pricing of the underlying model providers without any markup, so you pay the same rate as you would directly with the provider."
Input and output tokens are billed per model at the posted rates, and streaming doesn't change the price. If a model's price changes, OpenRouter keeps routing to it and charges the new rate.
Failed attempts: "An attempt that errors is not charged for its model tokens, so with fallback you pay only for the run that answers."
2. The platform fee: charged when you buy credits
This is the part people miss. In OpenRouter's words: "OpenRouter's fee is charged when you buy credits, 5.5% on Standard and 8% on Business, never on individual requests."
- Standard is the default pay-as-you-go plan.
- Business costs 8% on credit purchases and adds things like EU and US in-region routing (
eu.openrouter.ai,us.openrouter.ai), more workspaces (1,000 instead of 5) and advanced notifications. You upgrade from your settings: "There is no contract, no minimum spend, and no sales conversation." You can downgrade 30 days after upgrading. - Enterprise pricing "is set by contract and based on volume", with fee discounts, invoicing, SSO and SCIM.
OpenRouter says it doesn't discount inference itself: "We offer discounted OpenRouter fees in our enterprise plan. We do not discount inference."
3. BYOK: bring your own provider keys
With BYOK, the provider bills you for inference directly. Standard and Business include "$25,000 of list-price inference per month through BYOK with no OpenRouter fee". Above that, "OpenRouter charges 5% of what the same request would cost at list price on OpenRouter, deducted from your credits." Enterprise allowances are custom.
So BYOK usage under $25,000 a month at list price costs nothing extra on OpenRouter, but you still need some OpenRouter credits for any fee above the allowance.
4. Is OpenRouter free?
Partly. OpenRouter's FAQ: "All new users receive a small free allowance to test out OpenRouter." Beyond that, the Free plan covers free models only:
- Limits: "Free models are capped at 20 requests per minute and 50 per day, rising to 1,000 per day once your account has bought at least $10 of credits."
- "Failed attempts count toward that daily cap, and a negative balance blocks free models until you add credits."
- The FAQ calls free models "usually not suitable for production use".
- The
openrouter/freerouter picks a free model for you.
On the pricing table, auto-routing is marked for Standard and above, not Free. Paid models need credits.
5. Is there a minimum credit top-up?
OpenRouter's pricing FAQ says "Standard and Business have no minimums and no lock-in", meaning no minimum spend. We didn't find a minimum credit purchase amount on the pricing page or the FAQ (checked November 9, 2026); the amount the purchase form accepts may change, so check the Credits page when you buy. The one threshold the pricing page does name: buying at least $10 of credits lifts the free-model cap to 1,000 requests a day.
Other credit terms from the FAQ:
- Expiry: "we reserve the right to expire unused credits after one year of purchase".
- Refunds: unused credits can be refunded within 24 hours of purchase; "the platform fees are non-refundable", and "cryptocurrency payments are never refundable".
- Payment methods: credit and debit cards, AliPay, and crypto (USDC) on Standard and Business; invoicing on Enterprise.
- Auto top-up is available on Standard and Business. Prices exclude taxes; VAT or GST may be added where required.
6. Does Auto Router or Auto Code cost extra?
No. The pricing FAQ: "Routing through openrouter/auto adds no fee; you pay the rate of whichever model serves the request." The Auto Code docs say the same for openrouter/auto-code: "Auto Code doesn't add a fee." The platform fee on credits still applies. Because the router can pick a different model per turn, your cost per turn depends on what it picks; the model field of each response tells you which model answered. How the router chooses: OpenRouter Auto Code explained.
A worked example for a team
The formula, for a month:
U = model usage at provider list prices (what the same tokens would cost direct)
Standard: credits ≈ U fee ≈ U × 5.5%
Business: credits ≈ U fee ≈ U × 8%
BYOK: provider bills you U OpenRouter fee = 5% × max(0, U − $25,000)
Take a team whose coding agents use U = $2,000 a month at list prices. That number is an assumption for the example; use your own provider invoices. For a sense of how uneven agent spend is: in 385 developer-days of our own team's coding-agent traffic, a median day cost $4.30 at list prices and a 90th-percentile day $36.69, and the most expensive 10% of days were over half of the total (published here). Estimate from a month, not a day.
| Setup | Paid to model providers | Paid to OpenRouter | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard credits | (inside credits) | $2,000 credits + about $110 fee | about $2,110 |
| Business credits | (inside credits) | $2,000 credits + $160 fee | about $2,160 |
| BYOK on Standard or Business | $2,000 | $0 (under the $25,000 allowance) | $2,000 |
Three things the table can't show:
- Unused credits. The fee is paid when you buy; credits you don't use within a year may expire.
- Which models you use. A router can change U itself by sending turns to cheaper or more expensive models. For agent sessions, compare whole sessions on your own tasks, not single requests; we listed what to check in What to measure before you pick a coding router.
- Prompt caching. Most of a coding agent's input can be cache reads, billed at a fraction of the input price. Switching models mid-session gives that up; see the cache tips in using a router with Claude Code.
How CodeRouter prices, for reference
CodeRouter is a router for coding agents only. It bills model usage at list price +8% from a prepaid balance (top-ups from $20), with no monthly fee. On the same account you use smart routing (the model name auto) or Direct mode, where the model you name answers. Team is $19 per developer a month plus usage at list +8%, with budgets per member, project and company. New accounts get a 7-day trial with $5 of usage, on every model except Claude Opus.
In formula terms: pay as you go = U × 1.08 and Team = U × 1.08 + $19 × developers, where U is usage at list prices for the models that actually served your requests. Details on pricing; a side-by-side with OpenRouter on CodeRouter vs OpenRouter.
FAQ
How much does OpenRouter charge? Model usage at the provider's list price, plus a platform fee on credit purchases: 5.5% on Standard, 8% on Business, discounts on Enterprise.
Does OpenRouter mark up model prices? No, per its pricing page: "Inference is billed at the provider's list price on every plan."
What is OpenRouter's minimum top-up? OpenRouter states no minimum spend on Standard or Business. We found no minimum purchase amount on its pricing page or FAQ as of November 9, 2026; check the Credits page.
Is OpenRouter free? Free models are, within limits: 20 requests a minute and 50 a day, or 1,000 a day after you've bought at least $10 of credits. Paid models need credits.
How does OpenRouter BYOK pricing work? No OpenRouter fee on the first $25,000 of list-price BYOK inference each month on Standard and Business; 5% of the list-price cost above that, deducted from credits.
Do OpenRouter credits expire? OpenRouter reserves the right to expire unused credits one year after purchase.
Does OpenRouter Auto Code cost more than calling a model directly? The router adds no fee. You pay the model that serves each turn, plus the platform fee on the credits you bought.
Sources, checked November 9, 2026: OpenRouter pricing, OpenRouter FAQ, Auto Code docs. CodeRouter terms: pricing.