What OpenRouter is, and who pays for what

OpenRouter is a service that gives you one account and one key for hundreds of AI models, from Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI (GPT), Google (Gemini) and many more. Your Chirps use your own OpenRouter account to write their answers.

Who pays for what

• Your Chirp Builder plan pays for the software: building Chirps, hosting their chat pages, knowledge files, sharing, analytics and everything else in your plan. You can have as many Chirps as you like on every plan.
• Your OpenRouter account pays for the AI: each answer a Chirp writes, each web search and each picture it makes. OpenRouter charges your account directly, at its own prices. Chirp Builder adds no markup and never pays for your Chirps' answers.

Your preview chats in the editor count too, because they use the same AI.

How the money works at OpenRouter

You add credit to your OpenRouter account in advance, and each answer takes a little from it. Most answers cost a fraction of a cent; premium models and pictures cost more. The model list in the editor shows about what a typical reply costs for each model. See Choose your Chirp's AI model.

When the credit runs out, your Chirps stop answering until you add more. To be sure a busy Chirp never spends more than you plan, give your key a credit limit: see Keep your AI spending in check.

Why it works this way

• You choose any model for each Chirp, and change it whenever you like.
• You pay the AI's real price, with no markup and no monthly message allowance to run out of. (To protect your credit, one visitor can send up to 60 messages an hour to a Chirp.)
• You can see every answer's cost on OpenRouter, and an estimate in your Chirp Builder dashboard. See See what your Chirps cost.

Next steps

1. Create your OpenRouter account and key.
2. Connect your OpenRouter key.