What is OpenRouter?
OpenRouter provides one API for any model, eliminating vendor lock-in while optimising for price, latency and uptime. Its edge-hosted router automatically selects the most cost-effective provider, falls back when a model is unavailable, and normalises request/response formats so you can swap LLMs without rewriting code.
Key capabilities
- Model routing & fallbacks – Seamlessly route prompts across 400+ models (GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, Mistral, Llama 3, etc.) with ~25 ms added latency.
- Centralised billing – Pay with prepaid credits; per-model prices are shown in USD/token and updated continuously.
- Developer-friendly – OpenAI-compatible REST, WebSocket & SDKs; dashboards for usage metrics, leader-boards, and a live playground.
- Enterprise features – BYOK keys, granular data-policy controls, passkey auth, OAuth, uptime SLA, and audit logs.
- Ecosystem extras – Reasoning streams, structured outputs, web-search and PDF ingestion plugins, plus published “presets” to save common LLM configs.
Who is behind it?
OpenRouter was co-founded by Alex Atallah (OpenSea co-founder) and Louis Vichy. The company is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Menlo Ventures and Sequoia.
Why it matters
As the pace of model releases accelerates, OpenRouter acts as an abstraction layer—letting teams experiment rapidly, keep costs low, and stay resilient without committing to a single vendor.
