October 2025 BYOK platform fee update

OpenRouter ·

October 2025 BYOK platform fee update

Update, August 2026: BYOK pricing has since changed to a plan-dependent allowance measured by list-price inference cost. See the current pricing page and BYOK docs for the current policy.

Starting October 1st, every customer received 1,000,000 “Bring Your Own Key” (BYOK) requests per month for free. The change was automatic for all existing BYOK users. For customers exceeding 1m req/month, requests were charged at the then-current 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. Preview Sample

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FAQ

  • Who’s eligible?

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

  • What counted toward the 1M?

    • Under the October 2025 policy, this counted total requests routed through provider API keys, across all providers or models.

  • Is it per user or per organization?

    • For individual users (without any organization), it was per user.
    • For organizations with multiple users, it was managed at the organization level. Enterprise customers could contact us through the enterprise form.

  • What happened after 1M requests?

    • Under that policy, standard 5% BYOK fees applied beyond the free tier of 1M requests per month. The allowance reset at midnight UTC at the end of every month.

  • Did this affect non-BYOK usage?

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

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

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

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