The short answer: neither marks up inference. Both charge you list price for tokens. The difference is the entry fee — OpenRouter takes 5.5% on card credit purchases while NanoGPT has no deposit fee — and what each platform can do beyond text.
All figures below were checked against each provider’s own pricing and FAQ pages on 9 August 2026. Both change their terms; verify before you commit a large budget.
The comparison that matters#
| NanoGPT | OpenRouter | |
|---|---|---|
| Markup on inference | None on text — billed at list prices | “no markup on inference pricing” |
| Fee to add funds | None | Card via Stripe: 5.5% ($0.80 min) · Crypto (USDC): 5% |
| Minimum to start | $0.10 crypto / $1 card | Standard credit purchase |
| Bring your own key | 5% of normal model cost | First 1M requests/month free, then 5% |
| Pinning one provider | +5% | Routing preferences included |
| Subscription option | $12/month | — |
| Beyond text | Image and video generation on the same balance | LLM-focused |
| API shape | OpenAI-compatible, plus an Anthropic-compatible Messages API | OpenAI-compatible |
Where each one genuinely wins#
OpenRouter wins on resilience. Automatic fallback across providers is its real product. If a provider degrades mid-request, OpenRouter reroutes. If you are running something customer-facing where a failed call is a failed feature, that behaviour is worth paying an entry fee for. Its BYOK terms are also more generous at low volume — a million free BYOK requests a month is a real allowance.
NanoGPT wins on the cost of getting started and on range. No deposit fee means $20 loaded is $20 spendable, not $18.90. A $0.10 crypto minimum means you can test the platform for the price of nothing. And image and video generation sit on the same balance as chat, so creative work and text work bill from one place instead of three subscriptions.
The arithmetic, plainly#
The deposit fee is the whole game at small and medium volume, because it is charged on the way in regardless of what you spend it on.
- Load $100 via card on OpenRouter → $5.50 to Stripe fees. You have $94.50 of inference.
- Load $100 on NanoGPT → no deposit fee. You have $100 of inference.
Derived from each provider's published credit-purchase terms, checked 9 August 2026. Inference itself is list price on both, so this is the whole of the difference at small volume.
That gap does not compound, and it is not enormous. Be honest with yourself about scale: if you are spending $50 a month, this is a rounding error and you should choose on features, not on $2.75. If you are loading five figures a quarter, it stops being a rounding error.
Where OpenRouter claws it back: if you are BYOK at under a million requests a month, OpenRouter charges you nothing for routing while NanoGPT takes 5%. That can easily outweigh the deposit fee. Know which lane you are in before you choose.
Which should you pick?#
Choose OpenRouter if you need automatic failover, you are running production traffic where reliability beats unit cost, or you are bringing your own provider keys at moderate volume.
Choose NanoGPT if you are experimenting and want a near-zero-cost way to start, you want image and video in the same account as chat, or you would rather not lose 5.5% of every top-up.
Choose neither if you use exactly one model heavily at scale. At that point both routers are a layer you are paying for in latency and indirection. Go direct to the provider.
Honest caveats#
- “No markup” has exceptions on both sides. NanoGPT adds 5% if you pin a specific provider rather than letting it route. OpenRouter’s zero-markup claim is about inference, not about credit purchases.
- Model catalogues move weekly. Neither table above tries to count models, because any number would be wrong by the time you read it.
- Latency is workload-specific. Any router adds a hop. How much that costs you depends on your prompts, your region and the model — measure it on your own traffic rather than trusting anyone’s benchmark, including ours.
Keep reading#
- What NanoGPT actually costs — the full pricing breakdown, including the parts that are not free
- The full NanoGPT review — privacy model, API, and who it does not suit
- OpenRouter review — the gateway on its own terms
Checked 9 August 2026 against NanoGPT pricing and the OpenRouter FAQ . Live pages always control.