Get an OpenRouter key
Who this is for: anyone who wants OpenRouter's catalogue, including its :free models, through SpiderGate on their own OpenRouter account.
What this does: walks you through creating an sk-or-v1- key with a credit limit and your privacy settings, and adding it to your SpiderGate vault.
Before you begin
An OpenRouter account. OpenRouter's terms require you to be 18 or older.
About 3 minutes.
Limits and terms to know first
OpenRouter's free models are the ones whose id ends in :free. Their limits, from OpenRouter's limits page:
Your credit purchases (all time) | Free-model requests per minute | Free-model requests per day |
|---|---|---|
Less than 10 credits | 20 | 50 |
At least 10 credits | 20 | 1,000 |
A negative balance blocks free models too: OpenRouter says you may see 402 errors "including for free models".
Warning: Some model providers behind OpenRouter may train on your prompts. OpenRouter's privacy settings let you refuse providers that train, with separate settings for paid and free models. Set them before you send anything personal.
Warning: OpenRouter's terms forbid "reselling API access to Models" and transferring the access they grant you. Keep this key to your own brand.
Steps
Step 1 — Create the key
Sign in and open openrouter.ai/settings/keys. Create a key, give it a name, and choose a credit limit (or no limit). Copy it: OpenRouter's API docs say the key value "cannot be retrieved later". Keys start with sk-or-v1-.
Step 2 — Set your privacy choices
Open openrouter.ai/settings/privacy and choose whether to allow providers that may train on your data, for paid and for free models.
Step 3 — Add the key in SpiderGate
Open Gate → Vault (/dashboard/gate/vault) and click Add Provider. Type OpenRouter in Search providers... and pick it from the Free keys group.
Fill in the dialog:
API Key — paste the
sk-or-v1-keyLabel — a name you will recognise later, for example the account it came from.
Under Routing, turn Share with SpiderIQ key pool off. It is on by default, and while it is on, other brands can draw on this key's free quota. Your provider's terms tie the key to your account (see the warnings above), so keep it to your brand.
Click Add key. The button reads Saving... while SpiderGate checks the key.
Verify it worked
When you click Add key, SpiderGate sends one request to OpenRouter with the key before it stores anything: it reads the key's own details at https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/key.
If OpenRouter accepts the key, the dialog closes and the key appears in your vault list.
If it does not, the dialog stays open and shows:
The openrouter key did not pass its check: <reason>. Nothing was saved.The reason is SpiderGate's own wording, never OpenRouter's error text. The usual ones are Invalid API key (401 Unauthorized), Access denied (403 Forbidden) and The account behind this key has no credit left (402).
To see the key serve a request, give it a slot in one of your own routing aliases and send a request to that alias. The trace shows which provider answered.
Troubleshoot
Free requests fail about half the time at busy hours. That is the shared upstream limit on :free models, not your key. SpiderGate's own picker warns about it. Adding more free keys does not help; a paid model does.
Requests fail with a 402, even on a :free model. Your balance is negative. Add credits on OpenRouter.
Requests fail with a 503. OpenRouter says this means "There is no available model provider that meets your routing requirements". Your privacy settings may exclude every provider for that model.
Too many keys checked for this workspace; try again in …s. SpiderGate runs at most 20 key checks per brand in any 10 minutes. Wait the number of seconds it gives, then click Add key again.
Request timed out (15s) or Could not reach … to check the key. Try again later. The provider did not answer in time. Nothing was saved. Try again in a minute.
The provider is rate-limiting us (429). Try again in a minute. The provider throttled the check itself. Wait a minute and retry.