r/openrouter

Hey everyone,

I’ve been using Cursor Pro for about four months, and I’m starting to run into issues with it… Mainly the usage limits on frontier models. It’s been a bit frustrating and I’m considering switching setup.

Right now I’m thinking about using OpenRouter with Cursor instead, and plugging in my own API models. My budget is around $20–25/month.

A few questions:

Is this a good idea compared to staying on Cursor Pro?
Which models on OpenRouter would you recommend for coding (best balance of quality + cost)?

Any setups or workflows that work especially well with Cursor + OpenRouter?

I’d really appreciate any advice or experiences from people who’ve tried this.
Thanks in advance!

Nemotron model kinda sucks, owl alpha was great but not its gone, so what are you guys using now?

Hi all,

I've been vibing pretty hard for 9months or so and learned a lot a long the way. Constantly breaking down and remaking and making new stuff. Changing my process etc, imrpoving my workflow.

But I recently saw a video about Openrouter (some ethical hacker one re a pliny tool) and was intrigued. I have all sorts of vibe projects with API usage and have manual testing and usage / limiting.

I started asking claude about open router and immediately assumed I'd use a self hosted one, then realised BOOM I can try all these mad random APIs with the same bill and not leave random unused APIs in signups that I have forgotten for zombie projects. Love it.

Then I plugged in the MCP tool into claude code and told it to check my latest vibe project (image extraction and recipe generation).

And it reduced my API cost by like 24x - STOKED. I thought previously I was being stingy, using haiku for the recipe gen, and sonnet for the image extraction (claude told me don't cheap out here).

anway, I had no idea about the APIs the MCP suggested, but got CC to run a/b split tests just using my open router MCP and it confirmed the quality was basically the same with much cheaper models.

TLDR - I had no idea API routers were a thing, and am fully sold now. Totally worth the 5% fee and the workflow just became so much easier.

Don't fully have my head wrapped about the policy / security benefits but kinda do and have incoroporated it into my projects as well - but this is def. a new standard for all my future vibed apps that no one uses :p

https://preview.redd.it/kwlt2uaed7bh1.png?width=2172&format=png&auto=webp&s=0ead5c376f44a2c146518864276add12ec503ce8

I just checked out that DeepSeek developed DSpark to compete with MTP.

I did not follow up the original launch of DeepSeek V4 on OpenRouter so I can't tell if the model that is there is using DSpark or not.

The best TPS is 60 with the provider Alibaba, is this already running with DSpark?

Hello, brothers and sisters. i am new to openrouter, however, i enjoy it really much already. my question, or rather a discussion, what not expensive but worth it model of AI can you recommend me?

not Nvidia Nemotron cause it's un-workable on hermes agent and get's rate limited at the very start

Hello!

Has anyone here had any good experience with introducing Openrouter to an enterprise environment?

I am asking as I would like to be proactive and I am researching potential usage within a company as the price hikes from OpenAI and Anthropic are bound to come and models like GLM 5.2 are genuinely interesting.

Thank you kindly in advance for any pointers and info.

I've been strictly using only DeepSeek V4 Pro and DeepSeek V4 Flash because they're cheap. However I noticed there's an unexpected Opus 4.6 usage in my activity, not sure why.
I'm pretty sure I didn't select it by accident, I can't see any agent thread that used Opus 4.6.

Anyone else experienced this?

https://preview.redd.it/oaf06z2e21bh1.png?width=1647&format=png&auto=webp&s=82bc2bdd54617bf409952046a40d5a72c440d36d

i am thinking about putting in 10 dollars and using deepseek-v4 flash but i'm not sure how to make sure it'll last.

I am working on one app for which i need ai model. For development i want something free but couldn’t find it.help me find a good one

Owl-alpha is gone. I've tried using Nemotron 3 Ultra. It becomes very cringe, cliche and other very unappealing stuff. And many other ais are either very stupid, rate limited or flag responses because "it is inappropriate". Using free models on openrouter really is hopeless..

Does anyone know what happened to Owl Alpha?

Share what you're working on using OpenRouter for this month. All projects are welcome here!