> OpenRouter is guaranteed to be about the highest margin operator in the business right now. Everyone wishes they'd be them, skimming 5% off as the middleman without any OpEx.

The 5% fee probably has to factor in Stripe's fees, which would be around 3% to 4% depending on whether it's an international card.

Streaming, caching, and tool calling can get pretty expensive with scale, even when you don't touch inference. Maybe they're doing something clever and are quite profitable.. or maybe they've already taken $40mm from VCs and are currently trying to raise $120mm at a 1.3B evaluation.

They also show headline prices for the cheapest provider of whatever model, but then need to hit different backends some of which may be more expensive. For now they absorb those costs, but the VCs always come knocking.

Just my opinion though. Totally agreed that they have one of the best positions amongst all AI providers from a financial standpoint.