Starting October 1st, every customer gets 1,000,000 “Bring Your Own Key” (BYOK) requests per month for free. The change is automatic for all existing BYOK users. For customers exceeding 1m req/month, requests will be charged at the usual rate of 5%.

Not familiar with BYOK?

BYOK allows you to make requests through OpenRouter that use your provider API keys, so that you are billed by the underlying provider instead of by OpenRouter. When setting up BYOK, you can decided whether to fail over to OpenRouter if you run out of capacity on your keys, or whether to strictly use only your API keys. OpenRouter supports BYOK for over 60 different inference providers.

Startups and enterprises can apply their existing provider credits, negotiated inference rates, or provisioned throughput while benefiting from OpenRouter’s failover protection, additional capacity, spend controls, and access to more model options.

• BYOK overview and setup: https://openrouter.ai/docs/use-cases/byok

FAQ

• Who’s eligible?

  • All OpenRouter users and organizations. This is automatic for existing and new BYOK users starting October 1.

• What counts toward the 1M?

  • Total requests that are routed through your provider API keys, across all providers or models.

• Is it per user or per organization?

  • For individual users (without any organization) - its per user
  • For organizations with multiple users - its managed at org level, but you also get a better free limit per month. If you are interested in our enterprise plan, please reach out here enterprise form.

• What happens after 1M requests?

  • Standard 5% BYOK fees apply beyond the free tier of 1M requests per month. This resets at midnight UTC at the end of every month. See the BYOK docs for details.

• Does this affect non-BYOK usage?

  • No. Pricing for non-BYOK requests is unchanged.

• Are features or rate limits different on the free tier of BYOK?

  • No. You get the same BYOK features - failover protection, automated routing, spend controls, and model flexibility.