Started a side project using OpenRouter's free-tier models specifically because I didn't want to commit any spend before knowing if the idea was worth pursuing. Reasonable instinct — free tiers exist for exactly this reason.
What I ran into after a couple weeks of actual use, in case it's useful for anyone in the same spot:
Rate limits hit sooner than I expected. Free routes are rate-limited more aggressively than paid ones (which makes sense — they're not meant for production load), and I hit that ceiling during a demo to a friend, which was mildly embarrassing timing.
Model availability on free routes isn't always consistent. A couple of the free models I'd built around had occasional availability issues — again, understandable given they're often lower-priority routing, but worth knowing before you build a dependency on a specific free model for anything time-sensitive.
None of this is a knock on OpenRouter — free tiers with these tradeoffs are a completely reasonable way to let people experiment without a paywall, and I got real value out of it during the "is this idea even good" phase.
What I actually did once I confirmed the project was worth continuing: moved my highest-traffic calls to a pay-as-you-go setup (ended up on RouteAI for the specific models I needed) and kept OpenRouter's free tier for lower-priority experimental features I'm still iterating on. Splitting it that way — free tier for "still deciding if this matters," paid for "this is load-bearing" — has worked better than trying to force everything through one tier.
TL;DR: OpenRouter's free models are genuinely useful for early prototyping, but rate limits and availability variability showed up faster than I expected once I had real usage. Worth planning a path to paid/production access before you need it, rather than after you hit a wall mid-demo.
To learn more, please visit：https://www.fastrouteai.com
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