Start here
Getting an OpenRouter key
Create a key, add credit, paste it in. Five minutes, one-off.
OpenRouter is a single gateway to hundreds of AI models. One account and one key gets you DeepSeek, Gemini, Claude, GPT, Grok, GLM and the rest, billed at each provider's own rates with no subscription.
Why you need your own
Because it is cheaper and freer than the alternative. You pay wholesale for exactly what you use, you can switch to a model that costs a fraction of another mid-novel, and no plan limit decides how much you are allowed to write this month. It also means we never have to mark anything up.
Step by step
- Go to openrouter.ai and sign up — Google sign-in is the quickest.
- Open Credits and add some. $5 is more than enough to start — on a cheap model that is hundreds of chapters. Credits do not expire.
- Open Keys → Create key. Name it anything. Copy it — it is shown once.
- Back here, open Settings and paste it in. It is checked immediately, so you will know at once if it worked.
Good practice
- Set a credit limit on the key when you create it. It caps what that key can ever spend, which is a nice safety net.
- Use a separate key per app, so you can revoke this one without breaking anything else.
- Watch the first few chapters in the writer's spend panel to calibrate what your settings actually cost.
Where the key lives
In your browser's local storage. It is sent with each generation request so the call can be made on your behalf, and it is never stored in our database or logged. Clearing your browser data removes it, and you would paste it in again.