OpenRouter vs Together AI
Compare OpenRouter and Together AI on pricing, free tier, open source, API, self-host, verdict and momentum.
Both are dev-infra tools. OpenRouter is freemium (pay-per-token pass-through plus a small fee) with an API, a free tier; Together AI is freemium (starter credits; from $0.10/1M tokens (small open models)) with an API and a free tier. The catalog stamp is ship for OpenRouter and ship for Together AI, last verified 2026-09-01 and 2026-08-19 respectively.
OpenRouter
One API for every major model — unified billing, fallbacks and routing.
Together AI
Cloud inference for open models — serverless endpoints and fine-tuning.
| field | OpenRouter | Together AI |
|---|---|---|
| pricing | freemium · pay-per-token pass-through plus a small fee | freemium · starter credits; from $0.10/1M tokens (small open models) |
| free tier | yes | yes |
| open source | no | no |
| api | yes | yes |
| self-host | no | no |
| verdict | ship | ship |
| momentum | blueshift | steady |
| last verified | 2026-09-01 | 2026-08-19 |
| key limitation | Small markup over direct API pricing. | Costs at scale push you toward dedicated GPU contracts. |
The call
Pick OpenRouter for apps that should route across labs without a custom gateway.
Pick Together AI for hosted open models without picking a GPU vendor yet.
OpenRouter sources
Together AI sources
Open live compare →OpenRouter pageTogether AI pageOpenRouter.jsonTogether AI.json