Limits

Rate Limits

If you need a lot of inference, making additional accounts or API keys makes no difference. We manage the rate limit globally. We do however have different rate limits for different models, so you can share the load that way if you do run into issues. If you start getting rate limited — tell us! We are here to help. If you are able, don’t specify providers; that will let us load balance it better.

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.

TypeScript
1const response = await fetch('https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/auth/key', {
2  method: 'GET',
3  headers: {
4    Authorization: 'Bearer <OPENROUTER_API_KEY>',
5  },
6});

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

TypeScript
1type Key = {
2  data: {
3    label: string;
4    usage: number; // Number of credits used
5    limit: number | null; // Credit limit for the key, or null if unlimited
6    is_free_tier: boolean; // Whether the user has paid for credits before
7    rate_limit: {
8      requests: number; // Number of requests allowed...
9      interval: string; // in this interval, e.g. "10s"
10    };
11  };
12};

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. Partial credits round up in your favor. For the credits available on your API key, you can make 1 request per credit per second up to the surge limit (typically 500 requests per second, but you can go higher).

For example:

  • 0.5 credits → 1 req/s (minimum)
  • 5 credits → 5 req/s
  • 10 credits → 10 req/s
  • 500 credits → 500 req/s
  • 1000 credits → Contact us if you see ratelimiting from OpenRouter

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.

Built with