What is OpenRouter?
OpenRouter is an LLM aggregator: one OpenAI-compatible API that routes each request to one of 300+ chat models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral and a long tail of open-source providers. Instead of an account per provider, you hold one OpenRouter account and choose the model by name in the request. It is text-only — chat and completion models — with no image, video or audio generation endpoints.
How the OpenRouter API works
You send a standard OpenAI-style chat completion to OpenRouter's base URL with your OpenRouter key, setting the model field to a namespaced slug such as anthropic/claude-sonnet or openai/gpt-4o. OpenRouter forwards the call to that provider, can fall back to alternates, and returns the OpenAI-shaped response. Because it speaks the OpenAI protocol, any OpenAI SDK works by pointing base_url at it. Kunavo works the same way — the difference is the catalog and what sits behind it.
OpenRouter pricing, and how Kunavo compares
OpenRouter charges the upstream provider's per-token price plus a small platform margin, funded from a prepaid wallet (crypto-first, cards supported). Kunavo takes the opposite position: every enabled model is published 30–70% under the provider's official list rate depending on the model — Claude Sonnet 4.6 at $1.20/$6.00 per 1M tokens vs Anthropic's $3/$15, Gemini 2.5 Flash at $0.09/$0.75 vs Google's $0.30/$2.50. The per-1M rate for every model is on the /pricing page, so the comparison is direct.
OpenRouter API key vs Kunavo API key
An OpenRouter key authenticates against OpenRouter's text-model catalog only. A Kunavo key (sk-kn-…) authenticates against the same OpenAI-compatible chat endpoint plus image, video and audio endpoints and the native Anthropic Messages API — one credential for every modality, drawn from one Stripe-billed balance. Both are bearer tokens in the Authorization header, so moving across is a one-line base_url change plus the new key.
Where OpenRouter genuinely wins
If your product needs the long-tail of text-only chat models — Mistral fine-tunes, Llama variants, niche community models, experimental open-source — OpenRouter's catalog is unmatched. They also have the most mature crypto-native top-up flow, which matters if you operate in regions where cards are difficult. The community discussion around models, prompt techniques and benchmarks is also more active there.
Where Kunavo wins
Multimodal under one bill is the big one. The moment your product needs image generation, image editing, or video — OpenRouter doesn't cover those endpoints, so you'd be running two integrations and two billing relationships anyway. Kunavo gives you /v1/images, /v1/images/edits, /v1/video/generations and /v1/audio/music alongside chat, all OpenAI-shaped, all on the same wallet. The pricing also lands measurably lower: every enabled model runs 30–70% under the provider's official list price by model (we publish the per-1M-token rate on /pricing — easy to compare). Stripe-native checkout pulls in Apple Pay, Pix, Alipay, WeChat Pay and ACH, which makes self-serve onboarding work outside the US and EU.
How you pay: OpenRouter vs Kunavo
Both wallets are prepaid, so at signup the only question that matters is whether your money can get in. Kunavo's checkout is Stripe-native, so the list follows the buyer rather than our billing country: cards (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, JCB, UnionPay) and Apple Pay everywhere Stripe reaches, Link and Cash App Pay for one-tap repeat top-ups, Klarna and Amazon Pay, ACH bank transfer for US accounts, and Alipay and WeChat Pay for mainland China. Local rails appear by country — Pix in Brazil, Bancontact in Belgium, BLIK in Poland, EPS in Austria, MB WAY in Portugal — with Stripe converting the dollar amount into local currency on the checkout page, so a Brazilian buyer scans a Pix QR code for an amount in reais instead of hunting for a card cleared for international purchases. OpenRouter's own FAQ answers it plainly: all major credit cards, Alipay, and cryptocurrency in USDC, with PayPal described as something they are still working on. That covers a developer holding a card and a developer holding crypto. It does not cover the buyer in São Paulo without a card cleared for international purchases, or the one who would rather confirm a top-up with Face ID than type sixteen digits — which is the gap Pix and Apple Pay fill.
Migrating from OpenRouter
Both APIs speak the OpenAI chat-completions protocol, so the port is two lines, not a rewrite. Point base_url at https://api.kunavo.com/v1, swap your sk-or- key for a Kunavo sk-kn- key created at /app/keys, and your existing OpenAI SDK code runs unchanged — same request shape, same streaming, same tool-call format. The one thing to check is model ids: OpenRouter namespaces them by vendor (anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6), Kunavo uses the bare id (claude-sonnet-4-6), so a find-and-replace over your model constants finishes the job. Nothing else in your stack moves: no SDK swap, no response parsing changes, no webhook rework. Run both side by side on the same code path if you want — two clients differing only in base_url — and cut over once you've compared latency and cost on your own traffic.
The honest takeaways
If you've already standardized on OpenRouter for text and your product never needs image or video, there's not a strong forcing function to switch — your existing OpenAI SDK code is portable to Kunavo (one base_url change), so you can keep both in your back pocket and migrate when the price gap becomes worth the integration time. If you're building anything multimodal, or you serve customers paying with local rails outside USD, Kunavo is the simpler stack. Either way, the test is small: a $10 top-up and one base_url change get you evaluating in minutes.