tai/research/free-model-discovery/openrouter-api-v1-models.md

OpenRouter /api/v1/models listing

Metadata

Field	Value
Institute	Molodetz Institute — Research & Retrieval Division
Subject	free-model-discovery
Document type	Source Dossier
Tier	1
Source title	OpenRouter /api/v1/models listing
Source URL	https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/models
Source publisher / author	OpenRouter
Source type	vendor docs
Source date (published)	Unknown — not stated
Date researched	2026-10-12
Researched by	tai (agent), model: Claude Sonnet 5, on behalf of retoor
Research method	direct page fetch
Confidence	Medium
Status	Active

Summary

Public model list including a pricing object per model; readable without an API key.

Key findings

• 2026-10-12 free entries (:free suffix): apodex-1.1-mini, dots-3-note-preview, lfm-2.5-2.6b, nemotron-3.5-lightning, inkling-small, laguna-s-2.1, inkling, laguna-xs-2.1, north-mini-code, nemotron-3.5-content-safety, nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b, nemotron-3-nano-omni-30b-a3b-reasoning, gemma-4-26b-a4b-it, gemma-4-31b-it, nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b.
• openrouter/free is a free auto-router id without the :free suffix.
• Some zero-priced ids (lyria music models, ling-3.1-flash) are not :free and not chat models or not tagged free; tai ignores them.

Pros / strengths

Live, machine-readable, and the same endpoint tai calls at runtime, so what it reports is what a request will actually see.

Cons / limitations / caveats

Zero price on a non-:free id is not a guarantee of chat usability. Safety-classifier models (nemotron-content-safety) appear in the free set and are poor chat candidates; health ranking demotes them after failures.

Relevance to tai

tai's discovery already filtered on :free; it now also accepts openrouter/free and runs without an OpenRouter key.

Changelog

Date	Change
2026-10-12	Initial dossier created.