OpenRouter
A unified API gateway that routes requests to multiple model providers—pick your model, pick your price point.
Think of it like
A travel agent who books flights on whichever airline is cheapest that day, same destination either way.
Example
A startup building with GPT-4 on Monday realizes it's expensive, switches to Claude 3 on Tuesday, then to Llama on Wednesday—all without changing a line of code.
How it actually works
OpenRouter abstracts provider differences, caches keys, rate-limits across models, and lets you compare pricing and latency in real time. You're vendor-flexible, but you still own your usage data and API keys stay client-side. Catch: some models cost more through routers than directly.
For product teams
Reduces switching costs and lets you negotiate better pricing by playing providers against each other.
For engineers
Simplifies multi-model fallback logic and A/B testing between providers at runtime.
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