Provider Dossier · Router
OpenRouter
One API and one bill across nearly every provider and model.
The Datum Index verdict
Highly commended
Ranked No. 3 of 20 in our composite reputation index, and currently improving.
≈ 4.4 / 5 aggregate · 720 reviewer notes
Composite index · reviewed 10 July 2026
Findings
- OpenRouter holds a Datum Index composite reputation of 88 / 100 (≈ 4.4 / 5), ranked No. 3 of 20.
- It is a router based in Remote, USA, founded 2023, offering open & proprietary model access.
- Its flagship offering is Unified router across 300+ models, exposed through an OpenAI-compatible API.
- Indicative pricing is $0.90 / 1M tokens in / $0.90 / 1M tokens out (medium confidence).
- Reference throughput is ~90 tok/s with ~1000 ms time-to-first-token; stated uptime is 99.6%.
OpenRouter enters our index at No. 3, a placement that reads as highly commended. The composite rests on 720 reviewer notes gathered across the public record, and it is best understood not as a score out of ten but as a standing among peers. The trend line is pointed upward: reviewer sentiment has strengthened over recent quarters.
In its favour
One API and one bill across nearly every provider and model.
On the numbers that flatter it: open & proprietary access, 1 named compliance attestation, and a reference throughput of ~90 tokens per second.
Points of concern
Adds a routing hop; economics depend on upstream provider.
The caveat a buyer should price in before committing production traffic. As with every entry, we weigh it against the field rather than against perfection.
Incident & Uptime Note
The record of being there
OpenRouter states an availability of 99.6%. Held over a full year, that headline implies on the order of 35.0 hours of cumulative unavailability — a useful sense of scale, though real incidents cluster rather than spread evenly, and a single bad afternoon can outweigh a quiet quarter.
Observatory Panel
Latency & throughput, in distribution
Monthly panels across the models OpenRouter serves medium
Llama 3.3 70B (routed)
| Window | TTFT ms — mean · p50 · p90 | Throughput tok/s — mean · p50 · p90 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2026 | ~1270 | ~1080 | ~2200 | ~77 | ~83 | ~93 |
| June 2026 | ~1170 | ~1050 | ~1990 | ~79 | ~86 | ~100 |
| July 2026 | ~1070 | ~950 | ~1730 | ~89 | ~95 | ~104 |
GLM 5.2 (routed)
| Window | TTFT ms — mean · p50 · p90 | Throughput tok/s — mean · p50 · p90 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2026 | ~1160 | ~1070 | ~2040 | ~144 | ~155 | ~174 |
| June 2026 | ~1220 | ~1090 | ~1790 | ~139 | ~151 | ~176 |
| July 2026 | ~1230 | ~1070 | ~2040 | ~151 | ~155 | ~177 |
Kimi K3 (routed)
| Window | TTFT ms — mean · p50 · p90 | Throughput tok/s — mean · p50 · p90 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2026 | ~1360 | ~1200 | ~2440 | ~96 | ~100 | ~108 |
| June 2026 | ~1260 | ~1170 | ~1850 | ~100 | ~103 | ~117 |
| July 2026 | ~1450 | ~1280 | ~2580 | ~92 | ~93 | ~109 |
All figures are single-stream, per-request rates as one user would see them — never aggregate accelerator throughput. Serving modes are not comparable with one another: shared serverless APIs batch many tenants per accelerator, dedicated and self-served deployments hand one tenant the whole card, and specialist silicon is a regime of its own. Read each figure within its mode.
No field returns on record for OpenRouter yet — the ledger above opens as soon as the first practitioner submission clears verification.
Key Facts
The record, in brief
| Category | Router |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Remote, USA |
| Founded | 2023 |
| Model access | Open & proprietary |
| Flagship / reference | Unified router across 300+ models · Routes to many providers |
| OpenAI-compatible API | Yes |
| Indicative price (in / out) | $0.90 / 1M tokens / $0.90 / 1M tokens medium |
| Reference throughput | ~90 tok/s |
| Reference TTFT | ~1000 ms |
| Stated uptime | 99.6% |
| Compliance | GDPR |
| Composite reputation | 88 / 100 · ≈ 4.4 / 5 · 720 notes |
Reviewer Notes
What the field says
The 720 notes behind OpenRouter's standing are drawn from the accumulated public verdict of practitioners — the recurring praises and the recurring gripes — rather than from any single survey. Two themes dominate. Admirers return to one point above all: One API and one bill across nearly every provider and model. Detractors return to another: Adds a routing hop; economics depend on upstream provider.
We publish neither individual reviews nor reviewer identities; the composite is an editorial synthesis, and the reviewer-note count is an order-of-magnitude indication of how much public signal informs it.
Related dossiers · see also
Peer entries in the same or adjacent category, for comparison against OpenRouter's standing.