Comparison
Milly Lab vs OpenRouter
OpenRouter is a pay-as-you-go API to 500+ models from 80+ providers: inference is billed at provider list prices, plus a 5.5% fee on credit purchases on its Standard plan. Milly Lab pairs a chat workspace with an OpenAI-compatible API on one account; the API comes with the Max plan ($42 a month) and higher.
Last updated:
How do Milly Lab and OpenRouter compare?
The main differences are catalog size, how fees are charged, tool calling and whether a chat workspace comes with the API.
| What we compare | Milly Lab | OpenRouter |
|---|---|---|
| Price per month | $12–$72 for the paid plans, Starter to Advanced; Enterprise is priced on request | Pay-as-you-go credits on Standard and Business; Enterprise through sales |
| Developer API | OpenAI-compatible API included from Max ($42 a month), billed to the same account | Chat and API access, including on the Free plan |
| API fees | Provider rate plus a platform fee of $1 per 1M input and $1 per 1M output tokens ($0.01 per image); the plan allowance is spent first, then the balance at 2× | Provider list price with no markup; a 5.5% fee on credit purchases on Standard, 8% on Business |
| Models | Chat, image and embedding models; the live list with prices is public at GET /v1/models | 500+ models from 80+ providers |
| Free plan | 10 messages per model every 4 hours on GPT-5.6 Luna and DeepSeek V4 Flash; chat only | 25+ free models from 4 providers, 50 requests a day |
| API compatibility | OpenAI-compatible: chat completions with streaming, embeddings, image generation, the model list and a usage report | OpenAI-compatible: change the base URL and model names |
| Tool calling in the API | Tool fields are accepted but not executed yet | Supported when the underlying model supports tools |
| Spend controls | Monthly spend cap and model allow-list for each key | Budgets and spend controls on the Standard plan |
| Chat workspace | A full workspace with chat, image and video studios and Swarm Mind, in English, Russian and Tajik | A web chat alongside the API |
| Payment | SmartPay, a payment system from Tajikistan; payment in any currency | Credit and debit cards, AliPay and crypto (USDC) on Standard and Business |
Which Milly Lab plans include the API?
The API is included in Max, Advanced and Enterprise; the free plan does not include it, and neither do Starter and Pro.
| Plan | Price per month | API access |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Not included |
| Starter | $12 | Not included |
| Pro | $25 | Not included |
| Max | $42 | Included |
| Advanced | $72 | Included |
| Enterprise | On request | Included |
How does Milly Lab bill API calls?
Each API call costs the provider's rate plus a platform fee of $1 per million input tokens and $1 per million output tokens; each generated image carries a $0.01 fee.
- The plan's monthly allowance for the model is spent first.
- Usage beyond the allowance is charged to the top-up balance at 2× the cost.
- A call that the remaining allowance and balance cannot cover is refused with error 402 before any provider is called.
- Each key can have a monthly spend cap and a list of allowed models.
- GET /v1/usage reports requests, tokens and billed dollars for every key on the account.
Who should choose OpenRouter?
OpenRouter suits developers who need only an API, with a very large model catalog and pay-as-you-go billing.
- You need a very large catalog: 500+ models from 80+ providers through one API.
- You want to pay as you go at provider list prices, with a 5.5% fee on credit purchases.
- You need tool calling through the API today.
- You want free models to experiment with: more than 25 of them, at up to 50 requests a day.
Who should choose Milly Lab?
Milly Lab suits people who want a chat workspace and an API on one account, paid from one plan and balance.
- You want to chat, generate images and call the API from one account.
- Your API use fits a monthly plan: calls spend the plan's allowance for each model first.
- You want API documentation in English, Russian and Tajik.
- You want the interface in Tajik or Russian as well as English.
- You pay from Tajikistan or in a currency other than US dollars: SmartPay accepts payment in any currency.
Where do these facts come from?
Every OpenRouter fact on this page comes from the official pages below. Prices and features can change after the date of the check.
Verified on
- OpenRouter Pricing (openrouter.ai/pricing)
Milly Lab facts come from its own pages:
Product names (OpenRouter) appear here only to identify the products being compared. Milly Lab is an independent service, not affiliated with OpenRouter, Inc. and not endorsed by it.
What else can you compare?
Milly Lab is also compared side by side with these services:
More about Milly Lab: