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.