Keln vs OpenRouter. An OpenRouter alternative that works as a reliability layer for open models.
Open models, as reliable as a frontier API. Keln next to OpenRouter.
To move from OpenRouter to Keln you change two lines: the base URL and the key. Your code stays as it is. The same key also works in Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Codex. Below is what changes after the move: pricing, routing, data retention and the model catalog.
TL;DR
OpenRouter is a marketplace. You pick a model, set the routing options if you want to, and it sends each request to one of the providers listing that model. Keln makes sure the model you picked is served well, whichever provider answers. It keeps a small catalog of the best open models of the moment, checks every provider that serves them, keeps one price per model, and moves a request off a slow node before the slowdown reaches your app. You point your code at it and that is the end of the setup. Everything that would normally need an infrastructure person is already done. That is the whole idea: open models, at the quality and reliability you would expect from a frontier API.
The differences:
1. Pricing
On OpenRouter the price of a request depends on which provider gets it. OpenRouter passes provider pricing through with no markup on inference, and by default balances load toward cheaper providers, so two identical requests can cost different amounts. Buying credits carries a platform fee, 5.5% by card at the time of writing.
On Keln every model has one published rate, per million tokens, and you pay it no matter which provider served you. There is no platform fee and no minimum. The rate card is public on the Models page and in the API, and your usage dashboard shows cost per request, so the number you budget with is the number you pay.
2. Routing
By default OpenRouter picks a provider among those without a recent outage, weighted toward the cheaper ones. You can change that. Add :nitro to the model name and it routes by throughput instead, :floor routes by price, and you can pin providers by name or filter by quantization. What none of these do is check that a provider is serving the model well. Throughput is measured, quality is not, so a provider that is fast but wrong, or fast until it stalls, still gets your traffic. Catching that is left to you: retries, benchmarks, checking quality over time.
Keln does that checking. Every provider is verified continuously against the released weights, with quality checks on quantization, tool calls and modality. Each request is scored on live signals, time to first token, throughput, error rate, and only goes to capacity that clears the targets: an expected first token in under 5 seconds and at least 50 tokens per second. If a node stalls mid-stream, the request fails over to healthy capacity and finishes there. Outputs are normalized to one schema, so tool calls and reasoning fields behave the same whichever provider answered.
DeepSeek V4 Flash, 720 requests, medians. From the benchmark.
We measured that difference. For 12 hours we sent the same 720 reasoning puzzles to Keln, to OpenRouter with :nitro, so throughput routing was already on, and to DeepSeek's own API. The median answer took 27 seconds through Keln and 129 seconds through OpenRouter, almost five times longer. The cause was a single provider that was fast to start and slow to finish, which throughput sorting does not catch. Keln had already flagged it and was routing around it. Nobody using Keln had to notice. The full data is in the DeepSeek V4 Flash benchmark.
3. Data retention
On OpenRouter, data handling depends on the provider. Each one has its own retention and training policy, and OpenRouter shows them in a table. To stay on providers that keep nothing, you send zdr: true or data_collection: "deny" with the request, or set it account-wide. OpenRouter itself does not log prompts and completions unless you opt in.
On Keln zero data retention and zero training are the terms of serving traffic, for every provider, on every request. Prompts and completions stream through memory and are gone when the response ends. Keln checks each provider's terms against both promises before it joins and follows up on any gap. There is no flag to set. If your code still sends OpenRouter's zdr or data_collection flags, Keln accepts them and they change nothing. One less setting to get wrong. Details in Privacy & zero data retention.
4. Model catalog
OpenRouter lists hundreds of models, including the closed ones from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. If you want to test many models side by side, that breadth is useful. You pick the model, and OpenRouter picks the provider for each request unless you pin one.
Keln serves a small, curated catalog of open models: the best ones available today, like Kimi K3, Qwen3.8 Max, GLM 5.3 and DeepSeek V4, plus smaller and faster ones. Each is verified before it is listed and checked continuously after. New open models are added as they pass verification, and you can request one from the model catalog in the portal. Fewer choices, each one checked, so picking a model is the only decision left to you. In Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Codex the picker shows a smaller set of these, the models with tool calling and reasoning; the rest stay available through the API.
Switching
Keln is compatible with the OpenRouter interface, so a migration is two lines: the base URL becomes https://api.keln.ai/v1 and the key becomes your Keln key. Model ids follow the same maker/model shape. Provider flags you send today are accepted. The OpenAI SDK and the Vercel AI SDK work unchanged, and the quickstart has the two-line change for each.
The same key also works outside your code. Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Codex can all run on Keln's models with a two-minute setup:
When to pick OpenRouter
- You compare models often and want the widest catalog to test against.
- You want control over routing: pin a provider, sort by price, throughput or latency, filter by quantization.
- You want the lowest price for a model on any given day.
- You use closed models like GPT or Claude alongside open ones and want them all on one key and one bill.
When to pick Keln
- You want a short list of open models that are verified before they are listed.
- You want to keep pricing simple: the same price for the same model on every request.
- You want to ship on open models reliably, without anyone on the team owning inference.
- You want your app to stay fast when a provider does not.
- You want zero data retention on every request, with no flag to set.
- You want the same open models in Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Codex, on the same key.
Side by side
| Keln | OpenRouter | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | One published rate per model | Provider's price plus a credit fee |
| Routing | Fastest verified capacity | Price-weighted, or by throughput |
| Provider quality | Checked continuously | Not checked |
| Data retention | Zero, on every provider | Varies by provider |
| Models | Small, curated, verified | Hundreds, open and closed |
| API | OpenAI, OpenRouter, Vercel SDK | OpenAI-compatible |
OpenRouter details are taken from its public documentation on the day of writing. Fees and routing rules can change, so check its docs before you decide.