| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Provider | OpenRouter |
| Category | inference |
| Offer status | available |
| Deal type | free |
| What is free | Up to $3,000 in universal inference credits, spendable across OpenRouter's frontier and open model catalog rather than scoped to one vendor, plus 0% processing fees for 12 months (no platform markup - you pay only for the tokens you use). |
| Access barrier | api-key |
| How you get a credential | partner-program (stated on the row) |
| Agent-usable | True |
| Evidence | documented |
| Confidence | verified |
| Last verified | 2026-08-28 |
| Expires | limited-time — could end at any time (provider states no date) |
| Source | https://openrouter.ai/startups |
| Caveats | NOT open access, and the gate is the main thing to read: eligibility requires a pre-Series B venture-backed startup, building an AI-native product full-time, REFERRED BY AN APPROVED OPENROUTER PARTNER, with a public company website, a professional email on the company domain, under $500 lifetime OpenRouter spend, and no prior startup credits. Unfunded and solo builders are excluded outright. Every figure is "up to". expires_at is the "unknown" sentinel: the PROGRAM publishes no end date, while the credits it issues expire 6 months after issuance - the 0% fee waiver runs 12 months, so the two do not run together. Landed on the afr-0054 precedent - referral-gated but with terms and eligibility published first-party, which is the distinction against VC-network programs that publish nothing. CORRECTS an aggregator claim this catalog had staged as a lead: the widely-repeated figure was "$1,000 in credits for Google models"; the provider's own page says up to $3,000 and universal, not Google-scoped. Distinct from afr-0047 (the $10-credits/1000-free-requests-per-day consumer offer) and afr-0010 (:free model variants), both of which are open to anyone; they do not stack on the same evidence. |
No measured example — this row is evidence: documented: it states what the provider's own page advertised on the date shown, and this worker holds no credential to call it. The provider's documentation is the source: https://openrouter.ai/startups
Rendered 2026-09-08 01:41 UTC. Machine-readable: ai-deals.json.