OpenRouter Pricing 2026: Fees, Minimums & Markup

OpenRouter pricing in one sentence: models cost exactly what the provider charges, and OpenRouter makes its money on fees around that. OpenRouter adds no markup to per-token prices, but card top-ups on the Standard plan carry a 5.5% fee ($0.80 minimum) (the Business plan pays 8%), each purchase must be at least $5, and bring-your-own-key (BYOK) usage pays 5% once it passes $25,000 a month at list price (OpenRouter pricing, FAQ, Terms).

The whole OpenRouter fee model in six lines:

• Inference: the provider's list price per token, with no OpenRouter markup
• Card top-ups (Stripe): 5.5% fee, $0.80 minimum per purchase on the Standard plan; 8% on the Business plan
• Crypto top-ups: 5% fee, and crypto purchases are never refundable
• Purchase limits: $5 minimum and $25,000 maximum per transaction
• BYOK (your own provider keys): no fee for the first $25,000 per month of list-price usage on pay-as-you-go, then 5% of what the same call would cost on OpenRouter
• OpenRouter free models: 20 requests/minute and 50 requests/day, or 1,000/day once your purchases total at least 10 credits

All fee figures in this article are for the Standard plan, the default pay-as-you-go plan, unless noted. Below we break each OpenRouter fee down, show what top-ups really cost, and work through a full monthly bill.

Key Takeaways

• OpenRouter bills inference at the upstream provider's list price with no markup. OpenRouter's revenue comes from credit purchase fees and from BYOK usage beyond the monthly allowance.
• On the Standard plan, OpenRouter card top-ups cost 5.5% with a $0.80 minimum, so a $10 top-up costs $10.80 (an effective 8%). The Business plan pays 8% on credit purchases. Crypto top-ups cost 5%.
• The minimum OpenRouter credit purchase is $5 and the maximum is $25,000 per transaction.
• BYOK is free up to $25,000 of list-price usage per month on pay-as-you-go; above that, OpenRouter charges 5% of the equivalent platform cost.
• OpenRouter free models allow 20 requests per minute and 50 per day, rising to 1,000 per day once your purchases total at least 10 credits.
• In our GPT-6.1 Sol example, a $400 workload costs about $422 on OpenRouter once the top-up fee is included.

Related reading: OpenRouter API Guide: One API for Top AI Models; OpenRouter vs Direct Model APIs: Which Is Better?

OpenRouter Pricing: Quick Answers on Fees

• Does OpenRouter mark up model prices? No. OpenRouter passes through the underlying provider's pricing without any markup.
• What is the OpenRouter service fee? On the Standard plan, 5.5% on card credit purchases, with a $0.80 minimum per purchase, or 5% when paying with crypto. The Business plan pays 8% on credit purchases.
• What is the minimum OpenRouter top-up? $5 per transaction, up to $25,000.
• Does OpenRouter have a monthly fee or subscription? OpenRouter's FAQ lists no monthly or subscription fee for pay-as-you-go. You pay for credits, the purchase fee, and BYOK usage beyond the allowance. Enterprise terms are custom.
• Do OpenRouter credits expire? They can. OpenRouter reserves the right to expire unused credits 365 days after purchase.

The Three Ways OpenRouter Charges You

Pass-through inference pricing

Every OpenRouter model page lists input and output prices per million tokens, and those numbers come from the upstream provider (OpenRouter models). If OpenAI charges $2.00 in / $10.00 out per 1M tokens for GPT-6.1 Sol, that is what OpenRouter deducts from your credits when the request goes to OpenAI. The OpenRouter aggregation layer adds nothing to the per-token rate.

One detail to watch: on OpenRouter, the same model can be served by several providers, and their prices can differ. For example, OpenRouter lists GPT-6.1 Sol on Azure with EU in-region routing at $2.20 in / $11 out per 1M tokens. In-region routing is only available on the Business and Enterprise plans, so on Business that route also pays the 8% purchase fee, not 5.5% (OpenRouter pricing).

The credit purchase fee

OpenRouter credits are prepaid. On the Standard plan, each card top-up costs 5.5% of the amount, with a $0.80 floor, and crypto top-ups cost 5%. On the Business plan, credit purchases cost 8% (OpenRouter pricing). This is the fee most cost comparisons forget: on Standard, your effective token price is roughly list price × 1.055 for card top-ups above about $14.55, and higher for small top-ups because of the $0.80 minimum.

OpenRouter platform fees are not refundable. Unused OpenRouter credits can be refunded only within 24 hours of purchase, and crypto purchases are never refundable (Terms).

BYOK fees

Plugging your own OpenAI or Anthropic key into OpenRouter lets you use provider credits and negotiated rates. On pay-as-you-go, the first $25,000 per month of list-price usage carries no BYOK fee. Usage above that allowance costs 5% of what the same model and provider would cost on OpenRouter (OpenRouter FAQ). The allowance is measured in list-price inference cost, not in request count. Enterprise allowances are custom.

How Much Does an OpenRouter Top-Up Really Cost?

OpenRouter card (Stripe) top-ups on the Standard plan, at 5.5% with a $0.80 minimum fee:

The $0.80 minimum stops mattering at about $14.55. If you top up often in small amounts, batching purchases into $20 or more brings the OpenRouter fee down to the flat 5.5%.

OpenRouter Free Tier and Rate Limits

The 50-per-day baseline

OpenRouter models tagged :free cost nothing but are throttled: every account is capped at 20 free-model requests per minute, and until your credit purchases total at least 10 credits, you get 50 free-model requests per day (OpenRouter pricing).

Unlocking 1,000 requests per day

Once your purchases total at least 10 credits, the ceiling rises to 1,000 free-model requests per day (OpenRouter FAQ). With the $0.80 minimum fee, that $10 purchase costs $10.80, which is the cheapest way to make the free tier useful for prototyping.

What free actually buys

Beyond those rate caps, a negative credit balance blocks free models until you add credits. Treat free variants as a sandbox for prototyping, not a production tier.

How OpenRouter Routing Changes Your Bill

Default load balancing

By default, OpenRouter first prefers providers without significant outages in the last 30 seconds. Among those, it picks lower-cost providers more often, weighted by the inverse square of price, so a $1 provider is chosen about 9 times as often as a $3 provider (provider routing docs). Two identical OpenRouter requests can therefore be served by different providers at different prices.

Price-first routing

Setting provider: {"sort": "price"} in the request body always tries the lowest-price provider first and turns off load balancing. Appending :floor to a model slug is a shortcut for price sorting and also makes flex service tier endpoints eligible. Both are useful for batch workloads where latency matters less than cost.

Hard price caps

The OpenRouter max_price field only routes to providers at or below your limits, for example {"max_price": {"prompt": 1, "completion": 2}} in dollars per 1M tokens. It is the way to make "never pay more than X" a rule rather than a preference.

Worked Example: What an OpenRouter Workload Really Costs

A month of 100M input and 20M output tokens on GPT-6.1 Sol (standard pricing, up to 272K input tokens per request):

OpenAI prices are from the OpenAI pricing page; APIMart prices are Gold member prices for gpt-6.1-sol as of October 2026. Discounts on APIMart vary by model, so check live per-model rates on the APIMart pricing page.

When the top-up fee is worth it

If OpenRouter saves you from maintaining several vendor integrations and gives you provider failover, $22 on a $400 bill is cheap insurance. On the Business plan, the same bill carries a $32 fee (8%). The OpenRouter fee starts to hurt at large monthly spend.

When it is not

Single-model, high-volume workloads gain little from paying an OpenRouter top-up fee on every purchase. Go direct, or use a gateway whose unit prices are below list.

A gateway without a top-up fee

APIMart works differently: there is no fee on top-ups, you pay only for successful requests, and members get 20% or more off APIMart's list prices across chat, image, video and audio models. For GPT-6.1 Sol, that puts the Gold price 20% below OpenAI's list price. See the full side-by-side in our OpenRouter alternative comparison.

One API for Chat, Image, Video and Audio Models, No Top-Up Fee

APIMart serves chat, image, video and audio models behind one OpenAI-compatible API, with pay-as-you-go billing and every model's price listed on one page.

Compare Model Prices

Takeaways

OpenRouter pricing is transparent: list-price inference, a visible card top-up fee (5.5% with a $0.80 minimum on Standard, 8% on Business), a $5 minimum purchase, and a 5% BYOK fee only above $25,000 of monthly usage. Model your real cost as roughly list price × 1.055 on Standard or × 1.08 on Business, top up in amounts of $20 or more, and use sort, :floor and max_price to keep routing costs under control. If your stack goes beyond text models, or the fee math stops working for you, compare OpenRouter with a gateway that has no top-up fee.

FAQs

Does OpenRouter charge a markup on model prices?

No. OpenRouter passes through the underlying provider's pricing without any markup. OpenRouter earns money from credit purchase fees and from BYOK usage above the monthly allowance.

What is the minimum top-up on OpenRouter?

The minimum OpenRouter credit purchase is $5 per transaction, and the maximum is $25,000. On the Standard plan, a $5 card top-up costs $5.80 because of the $0.80 minimum fee.

How much is the OpenRouter fee for buying credits?

On the Standard plan, OpenRouter card purchases cost 5.5% with a $0.80 minimum per purchase, and crypto purchases cost 5%. On the Business plan, credit purchases cost 8%. OpenRouter platform fees are not refundable.

Does OpenRouter have a monthly fee or subscription?

OpenRouter's FAQ lists no monthly or subscription fee for pay-as-you-go. Your OpenRouter costs are the credits you use, the purchase fee, and the 5% BYOK fee on usage above $25,000 a month. Enterprise terms are custom.

Is BYOK free on OpenRouter?

Up to a point. On pay-as-you-go, the first $25,000 per month of list-price BYOK usage has no fee. Above that, OpenRouter charges 5% of what the same model and provider would cost on OpenRouter.

Do OpenRouter credits expire?

They can. OpenRouter's terms reserve the right to expire unused credits 365 days after purchase. Unused credits can be refunded only within 24 hours of purchase, and crypto purchases are never refundable.