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OpenRouter is joining Stripe

openrouter.ai

261–270 of 532 posts

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#261
post #221
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what OpenRouter already does, so the Stripe value add here is still unclear

Not OP, but I could see the vision. Right now OpenRouter is developer-paid with no way to pass costs onto the end user. Stripe could help bill and meter at the user level for per-user billing. I would also think more SDKs/easier ways to add AI features (paid for via openrouter) into apps and websites.

OpenRouter already supports this, requests return their exact cost.

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#262
post #245
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but I could see the vision. Right now OpenRouter is developer-paid with no way to pass costs onto the end user. Stripe could help bill and meter at the user level for per-user billing. I would also think more SDKs/easier ways to add AI features (paid for via openrouter) into apps and websites.

Open router supports per-request usage metering, as well as per-key. Building user-level metering from this is trivial, and there are many implementations of this out there. Supporting per-user first-class is trivial considering Open router already has per-request and already supports per-request attribution. How important that is, is a big question, but definitely not something that requires Stripe to build.

Could there be use cases where you want to run inference for users in your app, but don't want to host your own backend, user authentication, and billing?

The user could log into his personal OpenRouter account, authorize your application, and optionally set a budget, all in something like a Stripe payment screen.

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#265

I rather have protocols be built and less middlemen PaaS. One great example is Open Banking. I would support an Open Router that mirrors Open Banking, unfortunately the Open here doesn’t carry the same connotation. Kudos to the team for succeeding in executing around a clear DX issue during the chaos of providers, though long term I am not really a fan of it staying as is even if Stripe gets to be the one carrying it…

Every single Open Banking implementation I know also requires everyone to go through a useless certified middleman (eg. Plaid, GoCardless, ...) instead of letting people use the APIs directly

would encourage you to read up about how the rest of the world has solved this

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenRouter’s “moat” is currently “why would I use anything else?”. Stripe has presumably only purchased them because they think there’s consumer-surplus to monetize here, which presumably will soon be giving me lots of reasons to use something else.

Because the others are cheaper

Which other aggregators that have anywhere near the model selection are cheaper?

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#268

I rather have protocols be built and less middlemen PaaS. One great example is Open Banking. I would support an Open Router that mirrors Open Banking, unfortunately the Open here doesn’t carry the same connotation. Kudos to the team for succeeding in executing around a clear DX issue during the chaos of providers, though long term I am not really a fan of it staying as is even if Stripe gets to be the one carrying it…

One problem here with the protocols is the field isn't yet so stable. Most people are copying OpenAI's endpoint, and so you have "OpenAI compatible", but there are always little hairs on it. Case in point, OpenAI itself no longer offers multiple basic inference options on their new models. Can't pass temp, get back logits, etc. on anything after GPT 4.1. It's not a total zoo and Open Router is pretty easy but everything is just enough a special snowflake that models aren't a commodity. Maybe later though.

Re: OpenRouter is joining Stripe

#270
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open router supports per-request usage metering, as well as per-key. Building user-level metering from this is trivial, and there are many implementations of this out there. Supporting per-user first-class is trivial considering Open router already has per-request and already supports per-request attribution. How important that is, is a big question, but definitely not something that requires Stripe to build.

Could there be use cases where you want to run inference for users in your app, but don't want to host your own backend, user authentication, and billing? The user could log into his personal OpenRouter account, authorize your application, and optionally set a budget, all in something like a Stripe payment screen.

> The user could log into his personal OpenRouter account, authorize your application, and optionally set a budget, all in something like a Stripe payment screen.

Like standard oauth?

https://openrouter.ai/docs/guides/overview/auth/oauth

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