Having access to dozens of models through a single API key, tracking cost of each request, being able to run the same request on different models and comparing their results next to each other, separating usages through different API keys, adding your own presets, setting your routing rules...
And once you start using an account with multiple users, it's even more useful to have all those features!
Not relying on a subscription and having the right to do exactly what you want with your API key (using it with any tool/harness...) is also a big plus to me.
For general use, I personally don’t see much justification as to why I would want to pay a per-token fee just to not create a few accounts with my trusted providers and add them to an instance for users. It is transparent to users beyond them having a single internal API key (or multiple if you want to track specific app usage) for all the models they have access to, with limits and logging. They wouldn’t even need to know what provider is hosting the model and the underlying provider could be swapped without users knowing.
It is certainly easier to pay a fee per token on a small scale and not have to run an instance, so less technical users could definitely find advantage in just sticking with OpenRouter.
1. The LLM provider doesn't know it's you (unless you have personally identifiable information in your queries). If N people are accessing GPT-5.x using OpenRouter, OpenAI can't distinguish the people. It doesn't know if 1 person made all those requests, or N.
2. The ability to ensure your traffic is routed only to providers that claim not to log your inputs (not even for security purposes): https://openrouter.ai/docs/guides/routing/provider-selection...
It's been forever since I played with LiteLLM. Can I get these with it?
If you're only using flagship model providers then openrouter's value add is a lot more limited
if that wasn't the reason, hey that's actually a great way to launder money (not financial advice).
Or what are you really saying here? I don't understand how that's related to "you don't have the right to do what you want with the API Key", which is the FUD part.
Quote from their own TOS: access the Site or Service for purposes of reselling API access to AI Models or otherwise developing a competing service;
When you say "you don't have the right to do what you want with the API Key" it makes it sound like specific use cases are disallowed, or something similar. "You don't have the right to go against the ToS, for some reason they block you then!" would have been very different, and of course it's like that.
Bit like complaining that Stripe is preventing you from accepting credit card payments for narcotics. Yes, just because you have an API key doesn't mean somehow you can do whatever you want.
Are we allowed yes or not to make a service that charge per Token to end-users, like giving access to Kimi K2.5 to end-users through Openrouter in a pay per token basis?
My backup has been Opencode + Kimi K2. It's definitely not as strong as even Sonnet but it's pretty fast and is serviceable for basic web app work like the above.
I don’t have any extensions installed and I’m basically leaving it open, idle, as a note scratch space. I do have projects open with many files but not many actual files are open
Anyway idk
I opened just one of the typescript projects inside VSCode and I see something like 1gb (combining the helpers usage). I'm not using it actively, so no extra plugins and so on.
That's on mac, so I guess it may vary on other systems.
Spent a couple of hours trying to make the Svelte extension ignore a particular type of false positive CSS error, failed, and returned to VS Code
Will definitely give it another chance when the extension system is more mature though!
Any insights / suggestions / best practices?
With the anthropic billing change (not being able to use the max credits for pi) I think I have to cancel - as I'm whirring through credits now.
Going to move to the $250/mo OpenAI codex plan for now.
No need for database MCP, I use postgres and tell it to use psql.
Occasionally I use prettier to remove indentation - the LLM makes a lot less edit errors that way. Just add the indent back before you commit. Or tell pi to do it.
at first i thought i was goring to build lots of extra plugins and commands but what ended up working for me is:
- i have a simpel command that pulls context from a linear issue
- simple review command
- project specific skills for common tasks
He went on an "OSS vacation", which is perfectly reasonable and said he'd be back on a certain date. I had a PR open for a trivial fix, someone asked when it would land. I shared he was still away. After his return I politely asked, "@badlogic hey, what can we do to progress this? Thanks x"
I then got what I would consider an abusive reply, because he confused me with someone else. In the meantime he extended his vacation. Didn't even think his shitty attitude was worthy of an apology, that HE confused me with someone else.
https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/discussions/1475#discuss...
And another other thing I fixed with no attribution, just landed it himself separately. https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/discussions/1080
and
https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/issues/1079#event-223896...
Now he's seemingly marked anything with my name on as a "clanker", despite all my changes being by hand.
I've been around open source enough to have a thick skin, but when i'm doing something "for fun" and someone treats you like that, i'd rather avoid it as far as possible. I certainly could not in good faith use this project for anything work related.
Honestly, it seems like both of you were feeling a bit "grumpy" at the moment, but sending passive aggressiveness towards the maintainer you are trying to get to merge your code (or not your code, someone else's code?) seems like a very bold strategy regardless.
But that doesn't negate the maintainer talking to people like that (and taking contributions without attribution).. and the net result is I don't want to use the software, and frankly they probably won't miss me.. so the end result is neutral.. I just find it sad.
OpenCode picked up my CLAUDE.md files and skills straight away, and I got similar performance to Opus 4.6.
Many of us got the annual Lite plan when they had the $28 discount. But even at $120 I think it's a good deal.
I switched to OpenCode Zen + GitHub Copilot. For some reason, Claude Code burns through my quota really quickly.
Due to the quota changes, I actually find myself using Claude less and less
If I just let opencode zen run claude opus to plan and execute, I'd spend $20 in like 5 minutes lol
Personally, I've had a lot of good results in my little personal projects with Kimi K2.5, GLM 5 and 5.1, and MiniMax M2.5.
Because GH is accessing the API behind the scenes, you should face less degradation when using Sonnet/Opus models compared to a Claude subscription.
Keep a ChatGPT $20 subscription alongside for back-and-forth conversations and you'll get great bang for buck.
- context is aggressively trimmed compared to CC obviously for cost saving reasons, so the performance is worse
- the request pricing model forces me to adjust how I work
I like the VSCode integration and the MCP/LSP usage surprised me sometimes over the dumb grep from CC. Ironically VSCode is becoming my terminal emulator of choice for all the CLI agents - SSH/container access and the automatic port mapping, etc. - it's more convenient than tmux sessions for me. So Copilot would be ideal for me but yeah it's just tweaked for being budget/broad scope tool rather than a tool for professionals that would pay to get work done.
It turns it into a very good value for money, as far as I'm concerned.
GHCP at least is transparent about the pricing: hit enter on a prompt= one request. CC/Codex use some opaque quota scheme, where you never really know if a request will be 1,2,10% of your hourly max, let alone weekly max.
I've never seen much difference with context ostensibly being shorter in GHCP, all of the models (in any provider) lose the thread well before their window is full, and it seems that aggressive autocompaction is a pretty standard way to help with that, and CC/Codex do it frequently.
Then we've had wildly different results. Running CC and GH copilot with Opus 4.6 on same task and the results out of CC were just better, likewise for Codex and GPT 5.4. I have to assume it's the aggressive context compaction/limited context loading because tracking what copilot does it seems to read way less context and then misses out on stuff other agents pick up automatically.
https://www.techradar.com/pro/bad-news-skeptics-github-says-...
Also ditching Claude Code is mistake. It is quite capable model, and still great value. I would keep it, even if it's just for code reviews and planning. Anthropic allows pro plans use in Zed.
So yes obviously you can do what you want as long as you abide by terms of service, but the terms of service does NOT allow you to resell the API.
> TOS says: access the Site or Service for purposes of reselling API access to AI Models or otherwise developing a competing service;
I think what you meant is "you aren't allowed to expose the access to the API to end users", which is a fair condition IMHO.
You're still allowed to expose the functionality (ie. build a SaaS or AI assistant powered by OpenRouter API), just don't build a proxy.
OpenRouter recently started enforcing account-level regional restrictions for providers that enforce it (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) - ie blocking accounts that look like they are being used by users in China. The regional restriction used to be based on the Cloudflare edge worker IP's geolocation and enforced upstream, so a proxy/server running inside of supported regions would get around the geoblocks, but now OpenRouter are using (unspecified) signals like your billing address to geoblock. People say "banned" because the error message says "Author <provider> is banned", which really should be read as "Unable to use models from provider due to upstream ban".
1. What do you use the hooks for?
2. Do you use an editor alongside the CLI to review code or only examine the diffs?
The new gimped claude code limits means my claude code spend the last month is $131. It cost me $20. I did an additional spend $5 on extra usage which cost me $5.
While VC's are setting fire to money I am going to warm my hands.
If anything I would consider switching to OpenAI subscription (if I didn't despise them even more than Anthropic as a company), but converting to API use seems completely infeasible to me. I'd have to severely cut back on my use for not much benefit, other than having maybe an agent thats a little less jank than CC.
But at that point we are just min/maxing the details, and all I can say is if you are on a $100/$200 a month subscription to any of these services and not using them regularly then you shouldn't be on a $200 subscription any more than you should be on a $700 a month gym membership when you go every 3 months for 15 minutes.
I deffo get more perceived value out of it than the 100$ I pay. Could I get MORE value with the same 100$? imo only through OpenAI (no harness lock in and more lenient limits), but I deeply dislike the way their company is evolving. Admittedly, recent launches from Anthropic like managed agents and Mythos Preview don't make me very hopeful the individual developer pricing is here to stay, but I'll use what I can get while I can get it.
Could I get my required value with less than 100$? Mayyybe I could get by with like, three Anthropic 20$ plans? or 2x20$ and an OAI 20$? but this is so min-maxy that I just don't really want to bother. Pay by token would kill my workflow instantly. I'd have to add so many steps for model selection alone. I'll cross that bridge when Anthropic cuts me off.
I agree though most people on the $200 plans are either just not using them or in some deep AI psychosis. I'd like to exclude myself from these groups, but the pipeline to AI psychosis seems very wishy washy to begin with (the thread the other day about iTunes charts being AI dominated had a surprising amount of people defending AI music, imo).
I might be paranoid but I feel that access to models will become more constraint in the future as the industry gets more regulated.
We are not the only one. I found other people online experiencing the same issue. It is hard to tell how wide-spread this is but it is strange to say the least.
Sadly Zed seems to add 10% so it's still more worthwhile to use OpenRouter.
OpenRouter is a valuable service but I’ll probably try to run my own router going forward.
It’s mad for sure, but I’d bet 99.9% of people spending money on AI aren’t spending their own hard earned sooo… “YOLO it’s a business expense/investment”…
Now I'm happy with agents as the models and harnesses have improved significantly but the token usage comes at a cost.
Rather than trying to lie and get people to use your service, be honest what the upsides/downsides are, and only add your spam when it's at least a bit related, otherwise it just comes off as insincere when you're spamming your own platform in unrelated threads.