Look, OpenRouter is the darling of the indie hacker world right now. And for good reason. One API key to rule them all? Sign me up.
But putting all your eggs in one basket? Rookie mistake.
Sometimes OpenRouter has downtime. Sometimes their upstream providers choke on traffic. Or maybe you just need raw, unbridled speed that a middleman layer can't quite deliver perfectly every time.
I've burned through thousands of api calls testing the alternatives. Here are the ones that actually made it into my production `.env` files.
1. Together AI – The "Premium" Open Source Hub
If OpenRouter feels like a chaotic marketplace, Together AI feels like a curated boutique. They host the models themselves on their own GPU cloud.
- Why I use it: Reliability. When I hit their API, I know exactly what infrastructure is running it. No "routing" to random providers.
- The Killer Feature: Their inference stack is incredibly optimized. Together AI is consistently one of the fastest providers for Mixtral and Llama 3 models.
- Pricing: Very competitive, often matching or beating bare-metal costs.
2. Groq – The Speed Demon
You've probably seen the demos. Groq isn't running on NVIDIA GPUs; they built their own chips (LPUs) specifically for LLMs.
Real talk: The first time I used Groq, I thought my code was broken because the response came back instantly. It's fast fast.
It’s not a full router—they only host a few models (Llama 3, Mixtral, Gemma)—but if your app needs those specific open-source powerhouses, nothing else comes close to this latency.
3. DeepInfra – The "Budget King"
Are you building something that eats tokens for breakfast? DeepInfra is for you.
They focus entirely on low-cost, high-volume inference. Their pricing is often significantly lower than the big guys, and they support a massive range of models. It's a great "backend" alternative to OpenRouter if you want to bypass the aggregator fees (though OpenRouter text generation is often passed through at cost, having a direct relationship can be better for rate limits).
4. Fireworks AI – For Developers
Fireworks is built by ex-PyTorch leads. That should tell you everything you need to know.
Their FireFunction model is legitimately impressive for function calling, rivaling GPT-4 in some specific benchmarks. If you're building agents that need to browse the web or use tools, and you don't want to pay OpenAI prices, give Fireworks a shot.
# It's OpenAI compatible, so switching is usually just changing the base_url
base_url="https://api.fireworks.ai/inference/v1"5. Local LLMs (Ollama) – The "Zero Cost" & Private Option
Why pay for an API when you have a 16GB MacBook Pro sitting right there?
Okay, this isn't a cloud API, but it's the ultimate alternative. We have a full guide on Ollama here, but the gist is:
- Privacy: 100%. No data leaves your machine.
- Cost: $0.00 (minus electricity).
- Offline: Works on a plane.
Comparison Table
| Provider | Best For | The Vibe |
|---|---|---|
| OpenRouter | Everything | The Aggregator |
| Together AI | Reliability | Premium Cloud |
| Groq | Speed (Latency) | Instant |
| DeepInfra | Cost | Raw Power |
Final Verdict
Don't misunderstand me—I still use OpenRouter every day. It's fantastic for discovering new models.
But for my "serious" apps? I usually have a fallback key for Together AI or Groq. It’s cheap insurance. If OpenRouter has a hiccup, my users don't even notice. That's worth the extra API key management.
P.S. Looking for completely free options? Check out our full list of free LLM APIs.