An OpenRouter alternative for DeepSeek
A marketplace asks you to pick a provider, and the cheapest one is usually running a quantised copy. This does not: one price per model, at full precision, whoever is serving it. It suits you if you mostly run DeepSeek or GLM and would rather not shop for a route.
Side by side
What actually differs
Every cell is something we checked. Where we could not establish a fact, it says so rather than guessing.
| Tokenify | OpenRouter | |
|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek V4 Pro, per 1M input | $0.660, one price | $0.24–$1.65 depending on the provider you route to |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, per 1M input | $0.150 peak, $0.090 off-peak | $0.027–$0.60 depending on the provider |
| Precision at the cheapest price | Full precision, the vendor’s own weights | Every route below our price that states one is fp8 or fp4 |
| Choosing a provider | Nothing to choose; one price, routed for you | Providers are listed and selectable per request |
| OpenAI chat-completions format | Yes | Yes |
| Anthropic Messages format | Yes, same key and models | Yes, at /api/v1/messages |
| Model id spelling | vendor/model, the same strings | vendor/model |
| Card top-up fee | 5.5%, minimum $0.80 | 5.5%, minimum $0.80 |
| Crypto top-up fee | 2.5%, minimum $0.50 | 5% |
| Credit expiry | Does not expire | Reserves the right to expire unused credits after one year |
Our prices come from the live catalogue at build time. OpenRouter’s figures were read on 2026-10-01 from their FAQ, their API reference and their public endpoints API. Prices on a marketplace move; check them before deciding.
Corrected on 2026-10-01: this page previously said OpenRouter does not serve the Anthropic Messages format. It does, at /api/v1/messages. The claim came from their API reference, which documents only chat completions, and we should not have read a silence as an absence.
The price range is the point rather than a caveat. A marketplace’s headline number is its cheapest route, and for these models the cheapest routes are quantised copies — so the comparison worth making is against a route serving the same weights we do, where the vendor’s own list price is $1.32 and ours is $0.66.
Moving
Two lines, and the model ids stay
Model ids use the same vendor/model spelling, so the strings in your code do not change.
client = OpenAI(
- base_url="https://openrouter.ai/api/v1",
- api_key=os.environ["OPENROUTER_API_KEY"],
+ base_url="https://api.tokenify.dev/v1",
+ api_key=os.environ["TOKENIFY_API_KEY"],
)
# unchanged
client.chat.completions.create(
model="deepseek/deepseek-v4-pro",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}],
)The migration guide covers the differences that are not the base URL: headers, usage accounting and what we do with parameters a marketplace passes through.
Questions
Frequently asked
Is Tokenify cheaper than OpenRouter?
For the same model at full precision, yes — but that is not the whole answer and the comparison deserves better than a yes. OpenRouter is a marketplace: each model has many providers at different prices, and the cheapest is usually one serving a quantised copy. On 2026-10-01 the routes listed for DeepSeek V4 Pro ran from $0.24 to $1.65 per 1M input tokens. We sell one price, at full precision, below the middle of that range and half the vendor list price.
What is the actual difference, then?
You do not pick a provider and you do not get a different one next week. The price you see is the price you are charged, and the model is the vendor’s own at full precision rather than whichever quantisation is cheapest this week. Both of us serve the OpenAI and Anthropic formats, so that is not a difference.
Do I have to change my code?
The base URL and the key. Model ids use the same vendor/model spelling, so the strings in your code do not change. The migration guide in our docs has the diff.
What about fees on top-ups?
Card top-ups cost 5.5% with a $0.80 minimum at both, which is the card network's fee. Crypto is where they differ: ours is 2.5% and OpenRouter's is 5%, read from their FAQ on 2026-10-01.
Does my credit expire?
Ours does not. OpenRouter's documentation reserves the right to expire unused credits one year after purchase — their wording, read on 2026-10-01. Whether they act on it is not something we can tell you; what we can tell you is what each of us commits to.
DeepSeek pricing across sellers · every model · our rate card
Last updated 2026-10-01. Prices come from the live catalogue at the time this page was built.