Limits

Rate Limits and Credits Remaining

To check the rate limit or credits left on an API key, make a GET request to https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/auth/key.

javascript
fetch('https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/auth/key', {
  method: 'GET',
  headers: {
    Authorization: 'Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY',
  },
});

If you submit a valid API key, you should get a response of the form:

typescript
type Key = {
  data: {
    label: string;
    usage: number; // Number of credits used
    limit: number | null; // Credit limit for the key, or null if unlimited
    is_free_tier: boolean; // Whether the user has paid for credits before
    rate_limit: {
      requests: number; // Number of requests allowed...
      interval: string; // in this interval, e.g. "10s"
    };
  };
};

There are a few rate limits that apply to certain types of requests, regardless of account status:

1. Free limit: If you are using a free model variant (with an ID ending in :free), then you will be limited to 20 requests per minute and 200 requests per day.

2. DDoS protection: Cloudflare's DDoS protection will block requests that dramatically exceed reasonable usage.

For all other requests, rate limits are a function of the number of credits remaining on the key or account. For the credits available on your API key, you can make 1 request per credit per second up to the surge limit.

For example:

• 0 credits → 1 req/s (minimum)
• 5 credits → 5 req/s
• 10 credits → 10 req/s
• 1000 credits → 200 req/s (maximum)

If your account has a negative credit balance, you may see 402 errors, including for free models. Adding credits to put your balance above zero allows you to use those models again.

Token Limits

Some users may have too few credits on their account to make expensive requests. OpenRouter provides a way to know that before making a request to any model.

To get the maximum tokens that a user can generate and the maximum tokens allowed in their prompt, add authentication headers in your request to https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/models:

javascript
fetch('https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/models', {
  method: 'GET',
  headers: {
    Authorization: 'Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY',
  },
});

Each model will include a per_request_limits property:

typescript
type Model = {
  id: string;
  pricing: {
    prompt: number;
    completion: number;
  };
  context_length: number;
  per_request_limits: {
    prompt_tokens: number;
    completion_tokens: number;
  };
};