for smaller start ups, it's easier to go through one provider (OpenRouter) instead of having the hassle of managing different endpoints and accounts. you might get access to many more users that way.
mid to large companies might want to go directly to the source (you) if they want to really optimize the last mile but even that is debatable for many.
Hey @nnx & @hazelnut, good question, but no, we're not IonStream on OpenRouter.
The purpose of IonRouter is to let people publicly see the speed of our engine firsthand. It makes the sales pipeline a lot easier when a prospect can just go try it themselves before committing. Signup is low friction ($10 minimum to load, and we preload $0.10) so you can test right away.
That said, we do plan to offer this as a usage-based service within our own cloud. We own every layer of the stack— inference engine, GPU orchestration, scheduling, routing, billing, all of it. No third-party inference runtime, no off-the-shelf serving framework. So there's no reason for us to go through a middleman.
for smaller start ups, it's easier to go through one provider (OpenRouter) instead of having the hassle of managing different endpoints and accounts. you might get access to many more users that way.
mid to large companies might want to go directly to the source (you) if they want to really optimize the last mile but even that is debatable for many.