TFireworks AI vs OpenRouter
Pricing, features, platforms and who each one suits — side by side.
Choose Fireworks AI if…
- you're in its core audience: ai application developers, ml engineers
Choose OpenRouter if…
- you want a free plan to start with
- you're in its core audience: software developers, ai app and agent builders
Side by side
Full feature lists
F
Fireworks AI
- Serverless per-token inference for open models
- Single endpoint across 30+ regions
- Model ensembling that routes each task by accuracy and cost
- Dedicated GPU deployments from H100 to GB300
- Managed fine-tuning and training APIs
- Discounted cached input and 50%-off batch jobs
- Data residency controls and region-restricted deployments
- SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001/27701/42001 certifications
O
OpenRouter
- OpenAI-compatible chat completions endpoint
- Access to 600+ models from 80+ providers
- Automatic fallbacks around provider outages and rate limits
- Image, video, text-to-speech and speech-to-text endpoints
- Bring your own provider keys
- Budgets, spend controls and activity log export
- EU and US in-region routing
- Hosted MCP server for agent tooling
Their home pages
What each vendor shows first: the pitch, the plans and the sign-up.

Fireworks AI · fireworks.ai
OpenRouter · openrouter.aiWhat you'd pay
The cheapest plan that fits, per month, billed yearly where the plan offers it.
Fireworks AI
OpenRouter
Price changes we've recorded
We re-read each pricing page every month and log what changed.
Fireworks AI
- Nov 8, 2026Starting price: none → $8/mo; Reserved Throughput: Custom → Serverless rates, committed; New plan: Nexus Pro ($8); New plan: Nexus Team ($10); New plan: Nexus Enterprise (Custom); New plan: Dedicated GPUs ($8); Plan dropped: Dedicated Training API
OpenRouter
- Nov 8, 2026Standard: Pay-as-you-go, 5.5% fee on credit purchases → 5.5% fee on credit purchases; Business: Pay-as-you-go, 8% fee on credit purchases → 8% fee on credit purchases
Strengths and limitations
Fireworks AI
- Serverless pricing starts at $0.05 per 1M input tokens with no commitment
- Batch jobs cost 50% less
- Idle GPU deployments scale to zero after one hour
- Holds SOC 2 Type 2 and several ISO certifications
- Region-restricted deployments cost 1.5x
- Spot capacity is best-effort and only on select models
- Sovereign is still in private preview
OpenRouter
- No markup on provider token prices
- Free plan with 25+ free models
- BYOK fee-free up to $25,000 of monthly inference
- Payment by card, AliPay or USDC
- 5.5–8% platform fee on credit purchases
- Free plan limited to 50 requests per day
- SSO/SAML and SLAs only on Enterprise
More comparisons
Other options to consider
T

Cloud for running, fine-tuning and scaling open-source AI models on GPUs
G
Fast LLM inference cloud and OpenAI-compatible API built on custom LPU chips
R

Run, fine-tune and deploy open-source ML models through a cloud API
D

MOpen-weight AI models, chat and coding agent you can run on your own infrastructure


Open-weight AI models, chat and coding agent you can run on your own infrastructure
O

Run open AI models locally or in the cloud on macOS, Windows and Linux
Facts from each vendor's public pages, prices checked Nov 8, 2026. Editorial policy