Token302Compare
OpenRouter alternatives, compared honestly.
Aggregators, gateways and first-party inference providers, side by side on the things that actually differ: fees and markup, OpenAI-compatibility, and free tiers. Independent, no affiliate links.
Aggregators
One key and one wallet routed across many models from many upstream providers — the OpenRouter model. You compare on breadth, routing and fees.
Gateways
An ops layer in front of your own provider keys (BYOK): observability, caching, guardrails and routing. You keep direct provider billing and pay for the control plane.
Inference providers
First-party hosts that run open models on their own hardware at their own prices. You compare on speed and cost for open-weight models, not on breadth.
| Provider | Type | Pricing & fees | OpenAI API | Free tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenRouter The baseline: 400+ models from dozens of providers behind one key, with auto-routing and fallback. | Aggregator | No per-token markup; 5.5% ($0.80 min) card / 5% crypto top-up fee; BYOK free to 1M req/mo, then 5%. | Yes | Limited — free models, throttled |
| Hugging Face Inference One HF token routed across ~20 partner providers (Together, Groq, Fireworks…) over 200+ open models. | Aggregator | No markup; small monthly credits ($0.10 free / $2 PRO), then pay-as-you-go; BYOK bills you direct. | Partial | Limited — tiny monthly credit |
| Eden AI Unified API across LLMs plus OCR, speech, translation and image, from 50+ providers. | Aggregator | Provider price with no markup, plus a 5.5% platform fee on credit top-ups. | Partial | Trial credit |
| Vercel AI Gateway Single key to hundreds of models with zero markup, failover and first-party AI SDK integration. | Gateway | Zero markup, including BYOK; $5/mo free credits; some governance add-ons cost extra. | Yes | Limited — $5/mo credits |
| Portkey Open-source or hosted control plane: observability, guardrails, routing and caching over your own keys. | Gateway | Platform fee by log volume, not tokens (BYOK); free dev tier, $49/mo prod; self-host is free. | Yes | Yes — dev tier |
| LiteLLM Self-hosted proxy and SDK unifying 100+ providers behind the OpenAI format — no middleman in the path. | Gateway | Self-host free with no markup; enterprise priced on request capacity and support. | Yes | Free — self-host |
| Requesty Managed gateway to 600+ models with caching, cost analytics and enterprise governance. | Gateway | 5% markup; free tier (free models, 200 req/day); no subscription or minimum spend. | Yes | Limited — 200 req/day |
| Groq Ultra-fast inference for open models on custom LPU hardware — hundreds of tokens/sec. | Inference | Per-token pass-through, no platform fee; batch and prompt caching cut cost 50%. | Yes | Yes — no card |
| Together AI First-party cloud hosting 200+ open models: serverless, dedicated endpoints and fine-tuning. | Inference | Its own per-token rates; pay-as-you-go with no top-up surcharge. | Yes | Signup credit |
| Fireworks AI Speed-focused hosting for open models via its FireAttention engine, plus fine-tuning. | Inference | Its own per-token rates; dedicated GPU pricing too; $1 signup credit. | Yes | Signup credit |
| DeepInfra Among the cheapest per-token hosting for open-weight models, plus non-text modalities. | Inference | Per-token pass-through, no platform fee; a payment method is required to start. | Yes | No |
| Novita AI Cheap serverless open-model inference plus on-demand GPUs and dedicated endpoints. | Inference | Per-token with quantization tiers to trade cost for quality; batch cuts cost 50%. | Yes | Signup credit |
| Cloudflare Workers AI Serverless inference on Cloudflare's edge GPU network, integrated with Workers. | Inference | Priced in Neurons ($0.011 per 1,000); 10,000 neurons/day free on any plan. | Yes | Yes — 10k neurons/day |
| Replicate Run thousands of open models, especially image and video, with per-second compute billing. | Inference | Per-second of GPU compute or per-output; no platform fee. | No | No |
Fee and tier details verified 2026-07-31. Providers change pricing often — confirm on their own page before relying on it. For live per-token model prices, use the Cost Calculator.
Recently exited this category: Anyscale's hosted Endpoints (shut down 2024) and Unify's router (pivoted to agents). Many “best router” lists still include them.
Frequently asked
What is the best alternative to OpenRouter?
It depends on what you're optimizing for. For zero markup, look at Vercel AI Gateway or Hugging Face Inference. For raw speed on open models, Groq. For the cheapest open-model hosting, DeepInfra or Novita. For self-hosting and governance over your own keys, LiteLLM or Portkey. OpenRouter itself is still the broadest single-wallet aggregator.
Why use an OpenRouter alternative at all?
Common reasons: avoiding OpenRouter's credit top-up fee (5.5% on cards), getting faster inference, self-hosting the routing layer for privacy or control, keeping direct billing with your own provider keys, or needing capabilities OpenRouter doesn't route to, like per-second image and video models.
What's the difference between an aggregator, a gateway and an inference provider?
An aggregator gives you one key and one wallet across many models from many providers, the OpenRouter model. A gateway sits in front of your own provider keys and adds observability, caching and routing, so you keep direct billing. An inference provider hosts open models on its own hardware at its own prices and competes on speed and cost rather than breadth.
Are these providers OpenAI-compatible?
Most expose an OpenAI-compatible /v1 endpoint, so switching is often just a base URL and API key change. A few are partial (Hugging Face and Eden AI cover chat but route other tasks through their own SDKs) and Replicate uses its own predictions API rather than a drop-in chat endpoint.