The deciding difference is operational: vLLM can run on infrastructure you control, OpenRouter cannot. If that constraint is real for you, it settles the choice before anything else is considered.
One API key, several hundred models, automatic failover.
High-throughput open-weight serving on your own GPUs.
| OpenRouter | vLLM | |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | Proprietary | Open source |
| Pricing | usage based | open source |
| Self-hostable | No | Yes |
| Languages | TypeScript, Python | Python |
| Install | — | pip install vllm |
| Keys required | OPENROUTER_API_KEY | None |
The deciding difference is operational: vLLM can run on infrastructure you control, OpenRouter cannot. If that constraint is real for you, it settles the choice before anything else is considered. OpenRouter: One API key, several hundred models, automatic failover. vLLM: High-throughput open-weight serving on your own GPUs.
OpenRouter is a hosted service only. vLLM can run on your own infrastructure.
OpenRouter is proprietary (usage based). vLLM is open source (open source).
Every page here answers to Accept: text/markdown and returns the same content at roughly a tenth the tokens. No separate site, no toggle — same URL.
curl -s -H "Accept: text/markdown" https://newagent.build/compare/openrouter-vs-vllm