BYOK with Openrouter keys

[loud mural]

Hi, we have some users that are requesting whether we can add the possibility to BYOK on our service with Openrouter keys. We already have a trial with BYOK for OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS and some others, but not Openrouter yet. Can we implement this for Openrouter keys as well or would we run into some sort of rate limiting? Essentially - is the rate limiting done per API key or per API? From the documentation I'm quite sure it's API key, just want to make sure we're not starting this and then hitting some wall.

[timber sierra]

I'm an AI assistant - my answers may be incorrect and I cannot see screenshots. Please verify information with the OpenRouter docs.

You can add Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) support for OpenRouter keys. According to the documentation:

"if you choose to use your own provider API keys (Bring Your Own Key - BYOK), there is a fee of 5% of what the same model and provider would normally cost on OpenRouter. This allows you to manage your rate limits and costs directly with the provider while still leveraging OpenRouter’s unified interface" OpenRouter FAQ.

Regarding rate limiting: "If you have purchased at least 10 credits, your free model rate limit will be 1000 requests per day. Otherwise, you will be rate limited to 50 free model API requests per day." For paid usage, limits are managed per API key and depend on the credits associated with that key OpenRouter FAQ.

So, rate limiting is enforced per API key, not globally per API. This means you should be able to implement BYOK for OpenRouter without running into unexpected global API-level rate limits.

For full technical details and updates, see the BYOK use case documentation and API rate limits.

-# This is an automated response powered by Answer HQ. Use !mute to stop the bot from responding.

[jaunty dock]

Its done per key

[bleak quartz]

Sorry for asking after 2 weeks xd that does it mean?

that I'm not limited by OR 1k limit?

[jaunty dock]

My answer was wrong

There is no rate limit imposed by OpenRouter

Providers may rate limit OpenRouter as a whole, but OpenRouter won't rate limit you

[bleak quartz]

Okay, so I care about provider limits not OR limits. Thanks a lot

[jaunty dock]

I don't know what the rate limits are from providers, sorry

But they're really high

[bleak quartz]

I bought subscription on chutes to get 2k daily

and was curious if OR will limit me to 1k

[jaunty dock]

if you use BYOK, they won't

[bleak quartz]

because I got 10 bucks some months ago

[jaunty dock]

just don't use paid models

[bleak quartz]

yeah because i'm getting charged, I checked it, much cheaper tho. But anyway thanks a lot

[jaunty dock]

You get charged 5% if you use a paid model through OR even if you use BYOK