OpenRouter Cost Controls

Overview

OpenRouter provides per-key credit limits, a credit balance API, and per-generation cost queries. Combined with client-side budget middleware, you can enforce hard spending caps at the key level and soft caps in your application. This skill covers key-level limits, per-request cost tracking, budget enforcement middleware, and alert systems.

Check Credit Balance

# Current balance and limits
curl -s https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/auth/key \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY" | jq '{
    credits_used: .data.usage,
    credit_limit: .data.limit,
    remaining: ((.data.limit // 0) - .data.usage),
    is_free_tier: .data.is_free_tier,
    rate_limit: .data.rate_limit
  }'