OpenRouter vs Together AI
A side-by-side comparison of capabilities, autonomy, integrations, and pricing to help you choose.
Short answer: choose OpenRouter if you want one openai-compatible api for 400+ llms across 70+ providers, with routing and fallbacks (Assistant, usage); choose Together AI if you want cloud for running, fine-tuning, and serving open-source ai models (Assistant, usage).
| OpenRouter | Together AI | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | One OpenAI-compatible API for 400+ LLMs across 70+ providers, with routing and fallbacks | Cloud for running, fine-tuning, and serving open-source AI models |
| Type | platform | platform |
| Autonomy | Assistant | Assistant |
| Pricing | usage · Free tier; pay-as-you-go with ~5.5% fee on credit purchases | usage · Per-token usage from ~$0.03 / 1M input tokens; GPU clusters from ~$3.29/hr reserved |
| Best for | developers, smb, mid-market, enterprise | developers, enterprise, mid-market |
| Deployment | api, saas | api, saas, on-prem |
| Modalities | api, text, code, image | text, code, image, video, voice, api |
| Models | model-agnostic, gpt, claude, gemini, llama, open-source | llama, open-source, model-agnostic |
| Protocols | rest-api, mcp, function-calling | function-calling, rest-api |
| Integrations | OpenAI SDK, LangChain, Vercel AI SDK, OpenWebUI, Cline, Aider | OpenAI SDK, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Vercel AI SDK, Hugging Face |
| Capabilities | 5 documented | 6 documented |
OpenRouter
- +One OpenAI-compatible API and key for 400+ models across 70+ providers, with trivial model switching
- +Provider routing and automatic fallback pool uptime across providers for higher availability
- +States it does not mark up inference (provider pass-through pricing); free models and BYOK available
- -Adds a fee on credit purchases (around 5.5% pay-as-you-go) on top of provider rates
- -It is a routing layer, not an agent: it provides model access, not autonomous task execution
Together AI
- +Large catalog of open models across text, image, audio, and video
- +OpenAI-compatible API makes migration nearly drop-in
- +Full ladder from serverless to dedicated endpoints to raw GPU clusters
- -Serves open and bring-your-own models; no proprietary frontier model of its own
- -It is an inference and compute layer, not an end-to-end agent: orchestration is on you
Which should you choose?
OpenRouter is one openai-compatible api for 400+ llms across 70+ providers, with routing and fallbacks, best for developers, smb, mid-market, enterprise. Together AI is cloud for running, fine-tuning, and serving open-source ai models, best for developers, enterprise, mid-market. The right choice depends on the autonomy level you want, your existing integrations, and your budget, all compared above.
This comparison is generated from the sourced OpenRouter and Together AI profiles. Open either profile to review its evidence and last-reviewed date.