LLM gateways and observability · RankedOpenRouter
OpenRouter is a unified interface for accessing many AI models through one gateway, with a single billing relationship and managed API access · openrouter.ai ↗
Read the same way at every company size.
The standing depends on who is buying. Every model is asked the same questions for each company size.
Portkey is first at 36%.
LiteLLM is first at 36%. 1 of 14 models made it the first choice when asked directly.
Bifrost is first at 23%.
Why models recommend it
“Best default for most mid-market teams: OpenRouter”GPT-5.4 mini · Direct question · first choice
“Well‑documented, transparent marketplaces that expose provider lists, pricing, and model performance data (e.g., OpenRouter, Portkey AI Gateway)”GLM 4.7 FlashX · Negative question · alternative
“Choose Cloudflare or OpenRouter if you want zero infrastructure maintenance and fast deployment out of the box.”Gemini 3.5 Flash · Comparative question · alternative
“Choose OpenRouter instead if saving engineering time matters more than the roughly 5.5% credit-purchase fee”Perplexity Sonar · Budget-constrained question · alternative
What gives them pause
“The one I would not recommend for a mid-market B2B company is OpenRouter”DeepSeek V4 Flash · Direct question · warning
“"avoid OpenRouter for anything with sensitive/PII data" [4]”Muse Glimmer 30B · Negative question · warning
“Exercise caution with OpenRouter, Portkey, Vercel AI Gateway, and similar services when prompts contain personal, regulated, proprietary, or agent data.”Perplexity Sonar · Negative question · warning
“Less control over routing logic and observability compared to full-featured gateways like LiteLLM or Bifrost. Not a self-hostable option.”Qwen 3.7 Flash · Comparative question · warning
Also on the shortlist
The products named in the same answers as OpenRouter, over the 120 answers that named it, and how often each was the first choice instead.
| Product | Named together | Picked instead | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 113 | 38 | Compare → | |
| 87 | 24 | Compare → | |
| 74 | 5 | Compare → | |
| 61 | 21 | Compare → | |
| 57 | 1 | View → | |
| 31 | 2 | View → | |
| 26 | 2 | Compare → | |
| 13 | 0 | View → | |
| 12 | 0 | View → | |
| 10 | 0 | View → |
What the models named instead of OpenRouter →
A side-by-side page exists where both products are among a category's top eight.
At a glance
Stated on OpenRouter's own site, not checked by Gane.
- For
- indie hackers, AI native startups, growing teams, and enterprises
- Price stated
- Better prices, better uptime, no subscriptions.
- Starting price
- Free
- Free plan or trial
- Free
- Integrations
- 80 · 1 (its own pages disagree)
- Certifications
- SOC 2 Type II
- Hosting
- EU, US
- Customers named
- Replit, Hermes Agent, Kilo Code, NVIDIA, Framer, Zoom, Lovable, AMD
How this is measured
Fourteen AI models from 12 labs are asked the same buying questions six ways, for three company sizes. Standings refresh every edition.
Gane sells AI visibility software. No company can pay to change a result.
Read the method →Sources returned with these answers
Fourteen of the fourteen models returned a source list in this edition: five return the pages they cited and nine the search results they consulted. These counts come from 118 of the 120 answers that named OpenRouter and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
325 of the 384 domain citations in answers naming OpenRouter came from a third party's page. Twenty-six were to the publisher's own pages (the Gane Index), which the models cite like any other source; they are not counted as a third party.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
By model
| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Warning | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 4 |
| Grok 4.20 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Mistral Small | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 4 |
| Kimi K2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
What it publishes
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Comparison | 3,268 | 3 | 2026-09-22 | ||
| Report or ebook | 136 | undated | Observability | ||
| News or press | 70 | 12 | 2026-09-22 | ||
| Blog | 64 | 32 | 2026-09-29 | LLM gateways | |
| Template or tool | 12 | 0 | 2026-06-22 | ||
| Podcast or video | 12 | undated | |||
| Case study | 2 | 1 | 2026-09-15 | ||
| Glossary or explainer | 1 | 1 | 2026-09-21 |
Most recent
- 2026-09-29Image to video models compared blog
- 2026-09-28What Is Qwen 3.8? Models, Weights, Licenses, and Cost blog
- 2026-09-23How to Use Jev: Moderation with the Jev API in TypeScript blog
- 2026-09-23Best Embedding Models in 2026: RAG, Multilingual, Code, and Image blog
- 2026-09-22What Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning? Specs, Context, and API blog
- 2026-09-22Is Jev as Accurate as Frontier Models at Classification? comparison
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page openrouter.ai exposes, subdomains included. Kind is read from the address and title. The last 90 days, the latest date and the twelve months count pages by when they were published, from the site's feeds, a date in the address, or the page's own publication date, read from up to a hundred of its most recently changed pages; a page that says only when it last changed is counted in its kind but not in when, so the recent counts are a floor, and a kind none of whose pages gives a publication date reads undated. Read September 29, 2026.