Is OrcaRouter Free? Pricing, Free Plan and Limits (2026)

Yes, OrcaRouter has a free plan. The Hacker plan is free forever and gives you the full gateway, with routing to 200+ models and no markup on tokens. You still pay model providers for the tokens you use, and the paid Team plan costs $499 a month. See our OrcaRouter tool page for an overview.

By PowerfulAI.tools Editorial Team · Checked against the official site on 8 November 2026

OrcaRouter is an OpenAI-compatible AI gateway. You point your code at one endpoint and it routes each request to one of 200+ models, with automatic failover, request logs, guardrails and an agent firewall. Its pricing works differently from most AI tools: token costs are passed through at the provider's rate, and the subscription only pays for team features.

What the free plan includes

According to OrcaRouter's pricing page, the Hacker plan is "Free. Forever." and includes:

• Route: 200+ models with automatic failover
• Observe: a basic dashboard
• Manage: prompt versioning
• 10 API keys
• 0% token markup

The page describes the free Hacker tier as the full gateway: 200+ models, one OpenAI-compatible API and automatic failover. It also says every plan runs behind the same guardrails and agent firewall. The homepage adds that pattern-based guardrail rules are free, while an AI-judge rule bills only for its own check.

"Free" here means no subscription fee and no routing fee. It does not mean free tokens. You pay for model usage in one of three ways: pay-as-you-go top-ups, a credit subscription that refills your wallet each period, or bringing your own provider keys. The page notes that BYOK traffic may carry a platform fee.

OrcaRouter pricing

On top of any plan, you pay for tokens at the upstream provider's published rate. The pricing page shows examples per million tokens in US dollars, such as Anthropic's Claude Opus 5 at $5.00 input and $25.00 output, and grok-4.3 at $1.25 input and $2.50 output, each with a $0.00 OrcaRouter fee. Cached reads bill at the provider's cache rate. The page says the $0.00 fee applies to top-ups and subscriptions on Hacker and Team, and Enterprise contracts are quoted individually.

Is the paid plan worth it?

For solo developers and small projects, the free Hacker plan covers the core job: one API for many models, failover and basic visibility, with token costs the same as going direct. Ten API keys is the main hard limit.

The Team plan doesn't change what you pay per token, so the $499 a month only makes sense if you need what it adds: up to 10 seats, compliance enforcement and reporting, unlimited API keys and priority support. That points to companies with several engineers sharing one gateway, or teams that need audit evidence. Enterprise is for organisations that need an uptime SLA, dedicated infrastructure or more than 10 seats.

Free alternatives to OrcaRouter

These developer tools in our directory can be used without a subscription or have a free plan. The pricing notes come from our checked tool pages:

• OpenRouter: Inference is billed at providers' list prices with no subscription; OpenRouter adds a 5.5% fee on credit purchases on Standard and 8% on Business, and Enterprise is priced by contract.
• Cloptima: Free AI Developer plan includes 10k LLM events a month for 1 member; paid plans are AI Starter at $49/month, AI Pro at $249/month and AI Growth at $999/month, with custom Enterprise pricing.
• telemetry.dev: Free plan costs $0 with 30,000 ingestion units a month; Pro is $25 per month (500k units, 30-day retention) and Team is $50 per month (2M units, 90-day retention).

For more options, see our OrcaRouter alternatives page.

How we checked

We read OrcaRouter's official homepage (orcarouter.ai) and pricing page (orcarouter.ai/pricing) on 8 November 2026. All plan details and example token prices above come from those pages. We did not sign up or create an API key. Plans and model prices change (the page says model rates update live), so check the official pricing page before you commit.

Frequently asked questions

Is OrcaRouter free forever?

Yes. The Hacker plan is listed as free forever with zero markup on tokens. You still pay providers for the tokens you use.

Does OrcaRouter add a fee on tokens?

The pricing page says there is no OrcaRouter token markup on any tier, and a $0.00 routing fee on top-ups and subscriptions on Hacker and Team. BYOK traffic may carry a platform fee.

Can I use my own provider API keys?

Yes. Bring your own key is one of the three ways to pay for tokens, alongside pay-as-you-go top-ups and credit subscriptions.

What does the Team plan add?

Team costs $499 a month and adds up to 10 team seats, compliance enforcement and reports, unlimited API keys and priority support. It does not change token prices.