I dont know why people use openrouter ,instead of a monthly subscription, if they can. While i am barely able to use up my 100$ monthly subscription, i can easily spend 10$ a day on openrouter (200-300$/month). Using top-tier models on openrouter is so much more expensive from my experience then any subscription.

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PinguTS 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

All are moving from monthly to usage payments anyway.

You use the model you need. You don't need to use always the top tier model for anything. That is your decision. You can use a top tier for planing and then the agents can use cheap Chinese models. Much more cost effective.

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Freedumbs 3 days ago | parent [-]

To create an OpenRouter account, you have to supply a phone number. Neither Anthropic or OpenAI required this. This prevents privacy aware users from signing up.

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Hizonner 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I use OpenRouter all the time on an account for which I never supplied a phone number, email address, or anything of the kind. Maybe that was because I used an Ethereum wallet to authenticate, and paid in cryptocurrency (well, if USDC counts as "cryptocurrency"). Which admittedly makes OpenRouter's nosebleed prices even higher in effect, and supports some organizations I'd really rather not. And it's an oldish account; maybe you couldn't do that today.

In fact, I don't actually use it, but as an experiment I once set up and fooled around with an OpenRouter account over Tor. It did demand an email address, and I gave it a Proton account also set up over Tor. Both were paid for with anonymous cryptocurrency: Monero gatewayed via some random exchanger.

Whereas I never signed up for an Anthropic account because the first screen I hit demanded a phone number. I mean that was the only thing on the screen, and you weren't going anywhere until you provided it. It's been quite a while, though.

Perhaps there are different paths to getting accounts.

	▲	Freedumbs 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		It's possible that there are geographic differences. I don't dispute your experience, just sharing mine. It would be nice to experiment with their platform.

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2ndabdulhamid 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Anthropic request ID verification and OpenAI requires phone number in Europe. I don't know about other parts of the world, but I don't see any issues with OpenRouter.

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Freedumbs 3 days ago | parent [-]

Again, neither Anthropic or OpenAI asked for PII. Only my payment information. Open Router requires a phone to get an account, which is why I'll never have one.

	▲	msdz 19 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Seems anecdotal and/or a recent change. OpenRouter doesn't have my phone number either, but I do have an account. And I didn't sign up with them that long ago.

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f311a 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm using Deepseek flash for certain tasks, it is pretty hard to spend $10 on it. All their top models (by usage) are not from frontier labs.

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londons_explore 3 days ago | parent [-]

I suspect the main use of these models is for sending mass spam campaigns and other low-value tasks which are very price sensitive.

If you're paid a Western salary and using the model interactively (eg. For coding), you are wasting time+money by using the less good models.

	▲	f311a 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		No, it's good for coding and faster to iterate. Flash models work almost the same for changes under 1000 LOC when you dictate how you want your code to look. Big models still suck at big changes and big changes are hard to review.

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squidbeak 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I agree but subscriptions have limits, openrouter's very handy for excess.

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schmookeeg 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I can't use my Claude Code or GPT subscriptions for API access.

I don't want monthly subs to infrequently used models that I sometimes tap into.

...pretty much that's it. My 10 bucks at OpenRouter has lasted me several months for these edge cases.