How do I check my OpenRouter credits and spending?

Last updated: 26 September 2026 · Deutsch

Your balance is on the Credits page at openrouter.ai/settings/credits. The Activity page at openrouter.ai/activity shows what you spent, by model, provider and API key. From code, GET /api/v1/key shows what one key has spent and how much of its cap is left.

Below: the two API calls and which key each needs, caps per key, what happens at zero, and what fees apply. It follows OpenRouter’s own docs as of the date above.

On the website

Credits page (openrouter.ai/settings/credits). Your balance, and where you top up. OpenRouter counts credits in US dollars. You can top up by hand, or turn on auto top-up, which refills the balance once it drops below a threshold you set.
Activity page (openrouter.ai/activity). Your spend, requests and tokens over any date range. You can filter by model, provider and API key, and export the results as CSV or PDF.

OpenRouter charges the listed price per token and deducts it from your credits after each request.

Through the API

Two calls matter here, and they want different keys.

GET https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/key — send it with the normal API key, as a Bearer token. It reports on that one key: usage (all time), usage_daily, usage_weekly and usage_monthly, all in credits. Day, week and month follow UTC; the week starts on Monday. It also returns the key’s cap (limit, limit_remaining, limit_reset), BYOK use in separate fields, and is_free_tier, which says whether you have ever paid for credits.
GET https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/credits — returns total_credits (bought) and total_usage (used) for the whole account. Your balance is the first minus the second. OpenRouter’s reference says this call needs a management key. You create one on the Management API Keys page. It is only for admin tasks, such as managing keys, and cannot call models.

GET /api/v1/key works with the normal API key you use for requests and reports on that key alone. GET /api/v1/credits returns the credits bought and used on the whole account, but OpenRouter says it needs a management key, which cannot call models.

So /api/v1/key does not show your account balance. If you use several keys, each one shows only its own spend.

Caps per key

You can give each API key its own spending cap. It is optional; without one, limit and limit_remaining come back empty, which means “no cap”, not “nothing left”. A cap can reset daily, weekly or monthly — limit_reset names the rhythm, not a date. A daily reset happens at midnight UTC.

A cap does not add money. It only stops one key from spending more than you allow, even when the account has plenty left. A setting on the key decides whether BYOK use counts toward the cap.

What happens at zero

Requests fail with error 402, Payment Required. With a negative balance this can hit free models too. Add credits to bring the balance above zero, and they work again.

The error body says which limit you hit, in metadata.limit_source:

openrouter_credits — the balance cannot cover the request.
openrouter_key_limit — the key’s cap is used up. Raise it or wait for the reset.
openrouter_in_flight_budget — too many paid requests running at once for your balance. OpenRouter holds an estimate of each request’s cost while it runs. For accounts with a small balance, and for some newer ones, the total held can reach a limit before the balance does. Wait for the time in the Retry-After header and retry.

Free models (IDs ending in :free) have their own request limits: 20 per minute, and 50 per day if you have bought fewer than 10 credits in total, 1,000 per day if you have bought at least 10. /api/v1/key shows the daily count in free_model_daily_requests.

Fees

OpenRouter says it adds no markup to model prices. It takes a fee when you buy credits: 5.5 per cent, at least $0.80, by card, and 5 per cent for crypto.

With BYOK (“bring your own key”) you store a key from another provider in OpenRouter, and that provider bills you for the tokens. Does OpenRouter charge for that?

Yes, above a free allowance. Pay-as-you-go includes $25,000 of list-price use per month, Enterprise $200,000. Above that, the fee is 5 per cent of what the same model and provider would cost on OpenRouter, taken from your credits.

Two more rules from OpenRouter’s FAQ. It may expire unused credits one year after purchase. And you can ask for a refund of unused credits only within 24 hours of buying them, with the refund button on the Credits page; the fee is not refunded.

What AI Cockpit reads from OpenRouter and the other API accounts is in AI API costs at a glance.

In AI Cockpit

The OpenRouter card sits in the Mac menu bar and in the app on iPhone and iPad. On Apple Watch (via the iPhone app) it shows as one line in the list of sources. A normal API key is enough; no management key.

What the key spent today, this week, this month and in total, in US dollars, read from /api/v1/key. On the Mac it refreshes every five minutes by default.
If you have BYOK use this month, a line for it, kept apart from the credit spend.
If the key has a cap, a bar with the share used and the reset rhythm, such as “monthly”. It turns to a warning colour by default at 75 and 90 per cent on the Mac, at 80 and 95 on iPhone and Apple Watch. Without a cap, the card says so and shows no bar.
A “Free tier” badge if you have never bought credits.

What it does not show: your account balance (the app does not call /api/v1/credits), spend per model, or the free-model request count. It cannot top up either.

Short answers to other questions are on the FAQ page.