AI for Developers
OpenRouter logo

Best OpenRouter alternatives

8 tools developers use instead of OpenRouter, ranked by popularity. 7 offer a free plan and 2 are open source. Updated October 2026.

Free Open source Clear Showing 1–7 of 7
  1. Cerebras Inference logo

    Cerebras Inference

    Free plan

    Inference cloud running open models on Cerebras wafer-scale chips for very high tokens-per-second throughput, with an OpenAI-compatible API.

  2. Groq logo

    Groq

    Free plan

    Inference platform running on custom LPU chips rather than GPUs, delivering notably fast token generation speeds for open models like Llama and DeepSeek.

  3. LiteLLM logo

    LiteLLM

    Free Open source

    Open-source Python library and proxy server that calls 100+ LLM providers through one OpenAI-compatible interface, with built-in cost tracking and load balancing.

  4. Replicate logo

    Replicate

    Free plan

    Platform for running open-source machine learning models via a simple API, covering LLMs, image generation, and other model types with pay-per-use pricing and no infrastructure to manage.

  5. Together AI logo

    Together AI

    Free plan

    Cloud platform for running and fine-tuning open-source LLMs at scale, offering fast inference, dedicated GPU clusters, and a library of pre-hosted open models.

  6. Helicone logo

    Helicone

    Free plan Open source

    Open-source LLM observability proxy that sits between your app and a model provider, logging requests, costs, and latency with a one-line integration change.

  7. Portkey logo

    Portkey

    Free plan

    AI gateway for production LLM apps, combining provider routing and failover with caching, guardrails, and observability in one managed layer.