Amazon Bedrock vs OpenRouter
The question that decides it: Does the model call have to stay inside your AWS account and its compliance boundary?
Our verdict
If you are an AWS shop and the answer to that question is yes, Bedrock, and the catalogue limits are the price of the boundary. If not, OpenRouter reaches 83 providers against Bedrock's 19 and costs 5.5% on credits with no per-feature metering.
Why
This is a compliance-boundary question wearing a catalogue-size costume. Bedrock runs inside your AWS account, under IAM, in a region you choose, with the data path governed by the agreement you already have with AWS. For a regulated team that already passed an AWS review, that is most of the work already done, and no gateway in this catalogue can offer it. OpenRouter is a separate vendor, a separate contract and a separate review.
Neither charges a conventional gateway fee, but they recover it differently and that is the part people miss. Bedrock sets its own per-token prices rather than marking up a third party, so the routing layer is genuinely $0 — then it meters the governance. Guardrails content filters are $0.15 per 1,000 text units, sensitive-information filtering $0.10, Automated Reasoning checks $0.17, and Intelligent Prompt Routing $1.00 per 1,000 requests. OpenRouter takes 5.5% on credits and does not meter features, largely because it does not offer these ones.
Catalogue is where OpenRouter wins and the margin is real: 83 providers and 400 to 500 models, against Bedrock's 19 providers and a documented "100+ foundation models" with no exact count published. More usefully, OpenRouter typically carries several upstream deployments of the same open-weight model, which is what makes price sorting and failover between them worth anything. Bedrock gives you one path to each model, which is the trade you accept for the boundary.
On data handling both are strong, and Bedrock is the strictest thing in this catalogue: it logs nothing by default, retains for zero days, does not train on customer data and will sign a HIPAA BAA. OpenRouter also publishes zero-day retention, zero data retention and metadata-only logging, plus SOC 2 and EU residency, which is more than most managed gateways here. The difference is not the policy so much as who you are trusting to keep it.
Which one, concretely
Choose Amazon Bedrock if
- The call must stay inside your AWS account, region and IAM boundary
- You need a HIPAA BAA and a vendor review you have already completed
- You want no gateway fee at all and can live with metered guardrails
- Your models are the mainstream commercial ones rather than the open-weight long tail
Choose OpenRouter if
- You want the widest catalogue here — 83 providers against 19
- You want several upstream options for the same open-weight model, with price sorting and failover
- You are not on AWS, or do not want the model path tied to it
- You want one credit balance instead of an AWS bill with per-feature line items
What catches people out
- Bedrock's $0 gateway fee is real but its governance is metered: guardrails from $0.10 to $0.17 per 1,000 text units, prompt routing at $1.00 per 1,000 requests
- Bedrock publishes no exact model count — docs say "100+ foundation models" and the product page says "hundreds"
- OpenRouter's 5.5% is charged on adding funds, with a $0.80 card minimum that makes small top-ups expensive
- Model availability in Bedrock varies by region, so a model existing is not the same as it being callable where you deploy
Side by side
3 of 10 fields differ, marked with a dot. Every figure links to the vendor page it came from. Blank values read Not published rather than No — silence from a vendor is not a negative answer.
| Field | Amazon Bedrock | OpenRouter |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of leaving Derived score, higher is easier | 60/80 Some work to leave | 64/100 Some work to leave |
| Content guardrails Content guardrails | Yes | No |
| Strips personal data PII redaction | Yes | No |
| Settings can live in version control Declarative config-as-code | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 audited SOC 2 audited | Yes | Yes |
| Will sign a HIPAA agreement HIPAA BAA | Yes | Not published |
| Does not retain your data Zero data retention | Yes | Yes |
| Can keep data in the EU EU data residency | Not published | Yes |
| How long they keep it Default content retention (days) | Nothing kept by default | Nothing kept by default |
| Automatic failover Automatic failover | Not published | Yes |
| Rule-based routing Conditional routing | Yes | Yes |
Verified 3 days ago for Amazon Bedrock and Verified 3 days ago for OpenRouter. Want more fields, or a third option in the mix? Open these two in the full comparison tool.
Common questions
Does Amazon Bedrock charge a gateway fee?
No. Bedrock sets its own per-token prices rather than marking up another provider, so there is no separate routing fee. It charges separately for governance features: guardrails at $0.10 to $0.17 per 1,000 text units depending on the filter, and Intelligent Prompt Routing at $1.00 per 1,000 requests.
Which has more models?
OpenRouter, clearly on providers: 83 against Bedrock's 19. On models, OpenRouter advertises 500+ with 396 returned from a live call to its public endpoint, while Bedrock publishes no exact count beyond "100+ foundation models".
Which is better for regulated data?
Bedrock, for most teams, because the call stays inside your own AWS account under IAM and an agreement you already hold. It logs nothing by default, retains for zero days and will sign a HIPAA BAA. OpenRouter also publishes zero data retention, zero-day retention and SOC 2, but it is an additional vendor to review.
Can I use OpenRouter to reach Bedrock models?
Reaching a model through a marketplace is not the same as reaching it inside your AWS boundary. If the boundary is why you are considering Bedrock, routing through a third party gives that away regardless of which models are reachable.