One is a hosted marketplace. One runs on your own box.
OpenRouter is a hosted service. You get one API key, one bill, and a large catalogue of models from many providers, with optional automatic model selection. OmnisRouter is a proxy you run yourself. It sends each request to the cheapest model that can handle it, returns the answer in your client's own format, and hands you a receipt for the decision. Two different tools for two different constraints. Here is a straight comparison, including how to run both.
How they compare
| Dimension | OpenRouter | OmnisRouter |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | Hosted service | Self-hosted, single process (SQLite) |
| Keys and billing | Their key, their bill (credits) | Your provider keys (BYOK), your own bills |
| Model catalogue | Large, many providers | The pool you configure, growing |
| Routing logic | Automatic selection, logic not published | Open cluster model, rebuildable from public data |
| Per-request receipt | Reports which model answered | Chosen model, confidence, ranked alternatives, estimated saving |
| Decide without spending | No | Yes: POST /v1/route, no upstream call |
| Where prompts go | Through OpenRouter's service | Only to the chosen provider, from your infra |
| Licence | Commercial service | Apache-2.0, routing never paywalled |
What OpenRouter is good at
If you want the widest catalogue of models behind a single API, with billing handled for you and nothing to operate, OpenRouter is a strong choice and a genuinely useful service. Adding a new model is a string change. There is no server to run and no keys to manage per provider. For a lot of teams that convenience is exactly the point, and OmnisRouter is not trying to take it away.
What OmnisRouter does differently
OmnisRouter is built for people who would rather keep the routing on their own infrastructure and be able to see it. The routing model ships in the repo and rebuilds from public data, so the same inputs produce the same model. Every response carries a receipt: which model was chosen, how confident the router was, what else it considered, and the estimated saving against the strongest option. You bring your own provider keys, they are encrypted at rest, and prompt content leaves your machine only to the model you were routed to. Nothing about the decision is hidden, and routing itself is never behind a paywall.
You can run both
OmnisRouter can call OpenRouter as one of its upstream providers. Point the two together and you keep OpenRouter's catalogue while adding a transparent, self-hosted routing layer in front of it, with a receipt on every request. If you already rely on OpenRouter for breadth, this is the low-friction way to get the routing decision in the open without giving that breadth up.
Pick based on the constraint
OpenRouter
You want the biggest model catalogue behind one API, billing handled for you, and no infrastructure to run.
OmnisRouter
You want to self-host, keep your own provider keys and bills, and see, reproduce and audit how each request was routed.
Route on your own box in minutes
Run one process, add a key, point your client at it. Ask /v1/route what it would do before you spend anything.