{"name":"OpenRouter","tagline":"One API for every major model — unified billing, fallbacks and routing.","url":"https://openrouter.ai","category":"dev-infra","pricing":"freemium","price_note":"pay-per-token pass-through plus a small fee","free_tier":true,"open_source":false,"api":true,"self_host":false,"models_used":["gpt-5-6-terra","claude-sonnet-5","gemini-3-1-pro-preview","deepseek-v4-flash","qwen3-8-max","llama-4-maverick","mistral-large-2512","grok-4-6"],"model_routing":"locked","verdict":"ship","verdict_text":"Small teams get a lot of mileage out of this. Change one string to swap models, see all costs on one bill, get fallbacks when a provider flakes. You pay a small markup for the convenience, but it saves you from wiring a dozen APIs yourself.","limitations":["Small markup over direct API pricing.","Adds a network hop and latency.","Provider-specific features arrive later than direct APIs."],"strengths":["One string to swap models, one bill, fallbacks when a provider flakes.","Small teams avoid wiring a dozen lab APIs themselves."],"use_for":["Apps that should route across labs without a custom gateway.","Prototypes that will change models more than once a week."],"skip_when":["The markup over direct pricing is not worth the convenience.","An extra network hop would miss a latency budget.","You need provider-specific features the day they ship."],"receipts":["https://openrouter.ai","https://openrouter.ai/docs"],"affiliate":"none","evidence_tier":"source-verified","momentum":"blueshift","featured":true,"last_verified":"2026-09-01","observed_by":"whysanesanders","slug":"openrouter","canonical_url":"https://noemium.com/tools/openrouter/","attribution":"Noemium catalog data is licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). See https://noemium.com/method/ for how entries are verified."}