BaseRouter vs OpenRouter
Both are OpenAI-compatible gateways that let one API key reach Claude, GPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, Qwen and dozens of open models. The difference is what you pay per token and how little code you need to change to switch.
Output-token pricing, side by side
Output tokens dominate the bill for chat, agents, and long-form generation. BaseRouter is consistently 50% cheaper on the same upstream models.
| Model | OpenRouter | BaseRouter | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 4 (output / M) | $30.00 | $15.00 | −50% |
| Claude Sonnet 4 (output / M) | $15.00 | $7.50 | −50% |
| GPT-5.5 (output / M) | $30.00 | $15.00 | −50% |
| GPT-5 mini (output / M) | $1.20 | $0.60 | −50% |
| Gemini 2.5 Pro (output / M) | $10.00 | $5.00 | −50% |
| DeepSeek V3 (output / M) | $1.10 | $0.55 | −50% |
Model coverage
BaseRouter ships the frontier set every team actually reaches for — Anthropic Claude (Opus, Sonnet, Haiku), OpenAI GPT-5.5 / 5 / 5 mini / 4.1, Google Gemini 2.5 Pro and Flash, DeepSeek V3 and R1, Qwen 3, plus the most-used open-weight models. See the full catalog on the models page.
Drop-in migration for OpenAI SDK users
Because BaseRouter implements the OpenAI Chat Completions spec, switching is a base URL and a key — no new client library, no rewriting your prompt or tool-call code.
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(
base_url="https://api.baserouter.dev/v1",
api_key="sk-sr-..."
)
resp = client.chat.completions.create(
model="claude-opus-4-8",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}],
)What you get on top of price
- 100% bonus on your first deposit (up to 10,000 credits) — try frontier models for free.
- 2.5% lifetime referral payout for everyone you bring in.
- Prepaid credits that never expire, no subscription, no minimum commit.
- Per-call usage events with latency and token accounting for every request.
Create an account and get an sk-sr- key in seconds.