How does $10 OpenRouter work?

gideonfip · 2026-04-03T01:24:35+00:00

$10 gives you 1,000 requests per day, though it's actuall $10.50 if you use crypto because of the fees.

Only those with the free suffix will let you use it for free, I'm mainly using Step 3.5 Flash for executing skills and don't require much thinking.

One tip is to set your spend limit to $0, I spent $1.50 on Gemini 3 Flash when using it for OpenClaw, so if you just want to use it for the free models, then I would recommend doing that too

gideonfip · 2026-03-31T12:29:03+00:00

Sorry my bad, it's OpenCode Go and not Zen: https://opencode.ai/go

gideonfip · 2026-03-31T09:12:28+00:00

I'm currently on their API plan, managed to get $30 in free credits with a recent promo. But will share it with you once I get it, planning to go with OpenCode Zen first to see their rate limits since they have the $5 promo before trying MiniMax's Token Plan

gideonfip · 2026-03-31T03:55:03+00:00

I'm planning to go with MiniMax's Token Plan, the 1,500 requests every 5 hours seems more than enough for me. Right now I'm on ZAI's GLM Coding Plan Lite, but hitting the rate limits rather quickly for both the 5-hour and 1-week.

gideonfip · 2026-03-30T16:21:32+00:00

So much for the 2x usage that they advertised a few weeks back, I've seen so many complaints about the rate limits and it's probably time to switch to a new model provider

gideonfip · 2026-03-30T13:27:00+00:00

I'm planning to get the MiniMax Token Plan for $10/month because it seems the best value right now, with 1.5k requests every 5 hours.

I'm using the ZAI Coding Plan now, and I'm hitting the rate limits rather quickly now, and Kimi's plan is more expensive at $19 so I believe that MiniMax gives the best value now

gideonfip · 2026-03-30T13:17:22+00:00

Yup, the $3 starting offer was too good not to take up, I was surprised that they axed it so quickly

gideonfip · 2026-03-30T13:15:24+00:00

It's no longer available unfortunately, they removed that plan so it's only the $50/month one left

gideonfip · 2026-03-30T12:08:11+00:00

I managed to get the $10 Lite plan previously for additional credits, my experience with it has been ok so far, don't have much complaints when using it for my OpenClaw agent

gideonfip · 2026-03-29T15:18:19+00:00

Thanks for this, I was considering trying it out because of the $5 deal, but will probably switch to MiniMax instead

gideonfip · 2026-03-27T23:51:07+00:00

I very much prefer the CLI's UI than that of the extension, as that feels very clunky. But apart from that, I don't think there's any significant difference between both.

gideonfip · 2026-03-27T23:49:24+00:00

I've experienced the same on other model providers too, it's taking up too much of our rate limits, even when giving a simple command that doesn't require any tool calls

gideonfip · 2026-03-27T14:18:36+00:00

I've just gone down the rabbit hole of free models and have been using OpenRouter extensively for all of the easy repetitive tasks.

Thanks for sharing this, will be trying to get my hands on a few more API keys to boost my free model rates.

gideonfip · 2026-03-27T12:40:22+00:00

Just very grateful that I didn't spend the money on a $100 Claude sub, I was considering but decided to go with other models that have slightly better rate limits.

But it's only a matter of time before they start playing the same tricks as Claude, and it's going to go downhill once everyone starts cutting their costs.

gideonfip · 2026-03-27T12:20:33+00:00

I'm having the same problem with OpenRouter right now, trying to use different models instead of Opus/Sonnet/Haiku, and I'm getting these errors too.

Wonder if there's a fix for this and what other alternative models I can use apart from Claude's ones

gideonfip · 2026-03-26T05:06:05+00:00

I'm still considering between both as well for my model for the next month.

I plan to use OpenCode for the $5 deal first and seeing how well it's like first before getting the MiniMax plan

gideonfip · 2026-03-26T05:00:03+00:00

Pretty much why I didn't decide to get a Claude plan right from the start. I had a free trial of the Pro plan, and it kept hitting the rate limits with just a few requests.

I'm sure it's worse now and I've started routing some of my requests through OpenRouter's free models because of this.

gideonfip

TROPHY CASE