Key Takeaways
- For Claude and GPT, routing costs more than going direct. — Infron and OpenRouter both pass Anthropic and OpenAI list prices through unchanged, then charge a fee when you buy credits. Unless you need one key for many models, direct is about 5% cheaper.
- For open-weight and Chinese-cloud models, Infron is cheaper than the maker. — Infron resells DeepSeek, Kimi and Qwen through Alibaba Cloud, Volcano Engine, Tencent and Baidu partner routes at 40 to 60% off those clouds’ list prices. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash costs less through Infron than DeepSeek’s own off-peak rate.
- Gemini through Vertex is the surprise. — Infron lists Gemini 3.8 Flash on Google Vertex at 25% below Google’s list price. Google’s own Flex and Batch tiers are cheaper still, if your workload can wait.
- The fee is per top-up, so top up in bigger amounts. — Infron charges 5% plus $0.35 per credit purchase. On a $50 top-up that is 5.7%; on $1,000 it is 5.04%. BYOK traffic is fee-free on Infron and free up to $25,000 a month on OpenRouter.
Disclosure: We The Flywheel is in commercial discussions with Infron, including a possible sponsored placement. Prices on this page come from the providers’ and Infron’s public pricing pages and are not supplied or approved by any vendor.
What changes when you buy tokens through a router?
Three things can move the price: the per-token rate the router charges, the fee it takes on top, and the provider route behind the call. For the closed frontier models the rate does not move at all. Anthropic and OpenAI sell through their own APIs and a few hyperscalers at the same list price, and routers pass that price through. Where routers do undercut the maker is on models that many clouds host, because those clouds compete on price and a router can buy from the cheapest one.
How do the prices compare model by model?
Prices are US dollars per million tokens at the standard tier, before any router fee. The Infron column shows the cheapest Standard-tier route Infron listed on 2026-10-21.
| Model | Direct from maker (in / out) | Cheapest Infron route (in / out) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 5.5 | $4 / $20 (Anthropic) | $4 / $20 (Anthropic, Bedrock) | Same price |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | $2 / $10 (Anthropic) | $2 / $10 (Anthropic, Bedrock) | Same price |
| GPT-5.5 | $5 / $30 (OpenAI) | $5 / $30 (OpenAI) | Same price |
| GPT-5.4 | $2.50 / $15 (OpenAI) | $1.875 / $11.25 (Azure) | 25% lower |
| Gemini 3.8 Flash | $0.75 / $3.75 (Google AI) | $0.5625 / $2.8125 (Vertex) | 25% lower |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | $0.30 / $1.20 peak, $0.15 / $0.60 off-peak (DeepSeek) | $0.1132 / $0.4524 (Alibaba Cloud) | 62% below peak, 25% below off-peak |
| DeepSeek V4 Pro | $1.32 / $3.96 peak, $0.66 / $1.98 off-peak (DeepSeek) | $0.825 / $1.65 (Alibaba Cloud) | Lower than peak; output below off-peak |
| Kimi K3 | $3 / $15 (Moonshot AI) | $1.70 / $8.48 (Alibaba Cloud) | 43% lower |
Two caveats on the table. Google lists Gemini 3.8 Flash at $0.75 and $3.75 only through December 31, 2026, and doubles both from January 1, 2027, so the Vertex discount is against a moving baseline. And OpenAI and Google both sell Flex and Batch tiers at half the standard price for work that can wait; Infron lists Flex routes for some models too. If your workload is batch, compare Flex against Flex.
What do Infron and OpenRouter charge on top?
| Infron | OpenRouter | |
|---|---|---|
| Markup on token prices | None (pay-as-you-go) | None |
| Fee on credit purchase | 5% + $0.35 per top-up | 5.5% (Standard), 8% (Business) |
| Bring your own key | 0% fee | Free up to $25,000/month, then 5% |
| Enterprise | 3% fee, model discounts up to 30% by volume | Contract pricing, not published |
| Refunds | Pay-as-you-go credits non-refundable | See OpenRouter terms |
Because Infron’s fee has a fixed $0.35 part, small top-ups cost proportionally more: a $50 top-up costs $52.85 (5.7%), a $1,000 top-up $1,050.35 (5.04%). Above roughly $70 per top-up Infron’s fee is lower than OpenRouter’s 5.5%.
What is the effective price after the fee?
Adding Infron’s 5.04% fee (on $1,000 top-ups) to the routed prices gives the number to compare with a direct bill. Claude and GPT-5.5 end up about 5% more expensive than direct. Gemini 3.8 Flash ends up about $0.59 per million input tokens, roughly 21% below Google’s list price. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash ends up about $0.119 input and $0.475 output, still about 20% below DeepSeek’s own off-peak rate and 60% below peak.
What else should you check besides price?
- Latency. Neither router publishes latency figures per route. A partner cloud in Singapore or Frankfurt can be slower from your servers than the maker’s own endpoint. Measure time to first token on your own traffic before moving volume.
- Data handling. Infron states zero data retention by default and no training on customer data. Its SOC 2 Type II audit is listed as in progress.
- Region. Several of the cheapest Infron routes run in Chinese or Asian regions of Alibaba Cloud, Volcano Engine and Tencent. Infron also lists US and EU regions for some of them. Pick the region your data policy allows, not only the cheapest one.
- Feature passthrough. Prompt caching, batch APIs and tool-use details differ by route. Check that the features your code relies on survive the hop.
Which route should you use?
If most of your spend is Claude or GPT, buy direct and use a router only where you want fallbacks or one key. If a meaningful share is Gemini Flash, DeepSeek or Kimi, a router with discounted partner routes such as Infron can cut that share by 20 to 40% after fees, provided the latency and region of the route work for you. For how aggregators work in general, see LLM API aggregators compared; for gateways you run yourself, see OpenRouter alternatives. Prices last verified 2026-10-21; this table moves monthly.
What is Infron?
Infron (infron.ai) is an AI inference router. It exposes one OpenAI-compatible API in front of about 500 models and routes each call to an official partner provider, such as Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Vertex, Azure, Amazon Bedrock, Alibaba Cloud, Volcano Engine or Tencent Cloud, with provider preferences and fallbacks. It also offers dedicated deployments. It is the same category as OpenRouter, with a heavier focus on discounted partner routes for open-weight and Chinese-cloud models.
Is Infron cheaper than OpenRouter?
On fees, slightly: Infron charges 5% plus $0.35 per credit top-up on pay-as-you-go, against OpenRouter’s 5.5% on its Standard plan. Neither marks up per-token prices. The bigger difference is the partner routes: Infron lists DeepSeek, Kimi and Gemini on routes priced 25 to 60% below the provider’s list price, which matters more than the fee if those models carry your volume.
Is it cheaper to buy Claude or GPT through a router?
No. Infron and OpenRouter both pass Anthropic and OpenAI list prices through, so Claude Opus 5.5 is $4 in and $20 out per million tokens either way, plus the router’s credit fee. Routing is worth it for the single key, fallbacks and one bill across providers. On price alone, direct is cheaper for these two makers. Infron’s Enterprise plan advertises discounts of up to 30% at volume, which would change this; the pay-as-you-go plan has none.
What is the cheapest way to call DeepSeek V4.1 Flash?
At the prices we verified, Infron’s Alibaba Cloud route, at $0.1132 input and $0.4524 output per million tokens. DeepSeek’s own API costs $0.30 and $1.20 at peak and $0.15 and $0.60 off-peak. After Infron’s top-up fee the routed price is still roughly 20% below DeepSeek’s off-peak rate. DeepSeek’s cache-hit price ($0.003 off-peak) is lower than most Infron routes, so cache-heavy workloads should price both.
Does a router see my prompts?
Your traffic passes through it, so check the policy. Infron states zero data retention by default and no training on customer content, and marks which provider routes are zero-retention. Its SOC 2 Type II audit is listed as in progress, not complete. If you need a finished audit today, that is a reason to go direct or use an enterprise gateway you host.
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