OpenRouter vs Requesty
The question that decides it: Do you bring your own provider keys, and do you need a completed SOC 2 attestation today?
Our verdict
Bringing your own provider keys: Requesty, because its markup drops to 0% and you keep the routing, caching and EU residency for free. Buying credits through the gateway, or needing an attested SOC 2 report right now: OpenRouter.
Why
The fee shapes here are different in a way that changes who should pick what. OpenRouter charges 0% markup on tokens and 5.5% when you buy credits. Requesty charges 5% on every token routed but has no credit top-up fee, no seat fee and no minimum spend. If all your traffic flows through gateway-purchased credits, OpenRouter is materially cheaper — 5.5% once on the way in beats 5% on everything forever.
Bring your own provider keys and it inverts. Requesty charges 0% markup on BYOK traffic, which makes it free at the margin while still giving you routing, fallbacks, semantic caching, PII redaction and an EU-only endpoint. OpenRouter supports BYOK too, but its own documentation describes two different meters for when BYOK charges apply, which makes it harder to plan around.
Compliance is the sharper split. OpenRouter is SOC 2 attested. Requesty states SOC 2 Type II is in progress, not complete. If you are selling into an enterprise that will ask for the report during procurement, that difference decides the question regardless of price. Requesty also gates its governance features — RBAC, PII detection, guardrails, SSO — to its Enterprise tier, so the controls that make it attractive to a regulated buyer are not on the plan a small team would start on.
Requesty does have real advantages beyond BYOK pricing: a semantic cache, PII redaction and guardrails that OpenRouter does not offer at all, plus an EU-only routing endpoint with in-region logging, caching and analytics. If EU residency is a hard requirement and you can live with the SOC 2 status, it is the more capable product on paper.
Which one, concretely
Choose OpenRouter if
- You buy credits through the gateway rather than bringing provider keys
- You need a completed SOC 2 attestation for procurement today
- You want the largest catalog — 500+ models across 80+ providers
- You want a public models endpoint you can poll without a key
Choose Requesty if
- You bring your own provider keys, where the markup drops to 0%
- You need EU-only routing with in-region logging, caching and analytics
- You want semantic caching, PII redaction and guardrails, which OpenRouter lacks entirely
- You want a flat, predictable percentage with no top-up fee or minimum spend
What catches people out
- Requesty's SOC 2 Type II is in progress rather than attested. Verify current status before committing if procurement depends on it.
- Requesty's own pages state 600+, 400+ and 300+ models in different places. Treat any specific catalog number cautiously.
- Requesty's governance features — RBAC, PII detection, guardrails, SSO — are Enterprise-only, so evaluate them on the tier you would actually buy.
- Neither can be self-hosted. Both are managed SaaS with no VPC or air-gapped option.
Side by side
7 of 17 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 | OpenRouter | Requesty |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of leaving Derived score, higher is easier | 64/100 Some work to leave | 64/100 Some work to leave |
| What kind of product Category | Managed marketplace | Managed marketplace |
| Who runs it Deployment model | Managed only | Managed only |
| Licence Licence | Proprietary | Not published |
| Models available Models available | 400–500 | 160–600 |
| Model providers reachable Upstream providers | ~83 | Not published |
| Markup on model prices Token markup | None | 5% |
| Fee to add funds Credit purchase fee | 5.5% | Not published |
| Monthly cost per person Seat fee | Not published | None |
| Can use your own provider accounts BYOK supported | Yes | Yes |
| Can keep data in the EU EU data residency | Yes | Yes |
| Does not retain your data Zero data retention | Yes | Yes |
| SOC 2 audited SOC 2 audited | Yes | No |
| Similar-question caching Semantic cache | No | Yes |
| Content guardrails Content guardrails | No | Yes |
| Strips personal data PII redaction | No | Yes |
| Prompt versioning Prompt management | Not published | Yes |
| Delay it adds Proxy overhead | Not published | 16 ms |
Verified 2 days ago for OpenRouter and Verified 2 days ago for Requesty. Want more fields, or a third option in the mix? Open these two in the full comparison tool.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, OpenRouter or Requesty?
If you buy credits through the gateway, OpenRouter is cheaper: 5.5% once on credit purchase versus 5% on every token indefinitely. If you bring your own provider keys, Requesty is cheaper, because its markup drops to 0% on BYOK traffic.
Does Requesty have SOC 2?
Requesty states SOC 2 Type II is in progress rather than completed. OpenRouter is SOC 2 attested. If an enterprise buyer will request the report during procurement, confirm the current status directly with Requesty first.
Which one is better for European teams?
Requesty, on features: it offers an EU-only routing endpoint with in-region logging, caching and analytics, plus PII redaction. OpenRouter offers EU in-region routing as well but without the PII and guardrail tooling. The tradeoff is that Requesty has not completed SOC 2.