OpenRouter routes models. ToolRouter is the tools they call.
What does “the OpenRouter for tools” mean?
People search "OpenRouter for tools" when they want one place to give an assistant real work: live search, images, leads, scraping, SEO. That place is ToolRouter. OpenRouter is still where you send a prompt when you care which model answers. Use both. Neither replaces the other.
Is ToolRouter the same thing as OpenRouter?
- OpenRouter: 500+ models behind one API. You pay for tokens.
- ToolRouter: a catalog of tools the assistant calls. Free tools stay free. Paid tools charge when they succeed.
- OpenRouter's MCP lists their models, prices, and credits. It does not run ToolRouter's catalog.
- toolroute.ai already uses "OpenRouter for tools" as a slogan. Different company, different site.
- toolrouter.ai is also a different company. This product is toolrouter.com.
- Composio has a feature named Tool Router. That is not this product.
- Grok on grok.com and Grok Bot on x.ai are separate products. Do not collapse them.
Is ToolRouter the same company as toolrouter.ai or toolroute.ai?
No. ToolRouter is at toolrouter.com. toolrouter.ai and toolroute.ai are different companies with similar names, and ToolRoute.ai also uses the phrase “the OpenRouter for tools” on its own site. Composio’s Tool Router is a feature of Composio, not this product. If you are checking a claim, a price or a tool count, check it against toolrouter.com — figures published under the other names are theirs, not ours.
How does ToolRouter work, in three steps?
- Connect once. Paste the ToolRouter MCP URL into Claude, ChatGPT, Grok or Cursor, or run one command in a terminal client. An account is provisioned on first call, so there is no signup, no key and no config file before you can use a tool.
- The agent discovers what it needs. Rather than loading 1,345 skill schemas into context, the agent calls discover to search the catalog and use_tool to run one skill. That keeps the connected surface small enough that a tool catalog this size does not crowd out the conversation.
- Pay only for paid calls that work. Free tools run for nothing, forever. Paid tools cost the provider price plus a flat $0.005 platform fee, drawn from credits. A paid call that fails is not charged, and you can bring your own provider key to skip the service cost entirely.
ToolRouter vs OpenRouter: which one do I need?
| Feature | ToolRouter | OpenRouter |
|---|---|---|
| Job | Tools the assistant can run | Models the assistant runs on |
| What the MCP server does | Discover and call tools | List models, prices, and credits |
| Models | You bring Claude, ChatGPT, Grok, Cursor, Gemini | 500+ models, 80+ providers |
| Tools | Hosted catalog of jobs such as search, media, SEO, and leads | Function calling into models, not a general tool catalog |
| Billing | Free tools stay free. Paid tools from $0.005 per successful call. Lite $9 and Plus $19 are optional. | Credits for inference, with a 5.5% purchase fee on top-ups |
| Honest win | A maintained tool catalog across assistants | Model breadth and uptime routing |
Prices last checked 20 August 2026 on openrouter.ai/pricing and toolrouter.com/pricing. A ToolRouter call and an OpenRouter token are different meters. Do not compare $0.005 to a per-token rate.
Can I run OpenRouter and ToolRouter together?
Yes, and they do different jobs in the same request. A typical setup routes the model through OpenRouter — say Claude for reasoning and a cheaper model for bulk summarisation — while that model reaches ToolRouter over MCP to run the work: scrape a page, search the live web, generate an image, pull a stock quote, build a chart. OpenRouter bills you for tokens; ToolRouter bills you for finished tool calls. Neither one can do the other’s job: OpenRouter will not scrape a page, and ToolRouter will not answer a prompt.
Which “OpenRouter for tools” should I pick?
| Catalog size (their number) | Connect by | Entry price | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ToolRouter | 254 tools, 1,345 skills | Hosted MCP, CLI, REST | Free tools stay free; paid tools from $0.005 per call |
| Monid | “1,700 tools & APIs” across “55+ providers” | Skill, remote MCP, CLI, HTTP API, OAuth 2.0 | “$0.0013” per call, “$1 in free credit” |
| ToolRoute.ai | “70+ best-in-class tools for AI agents” | Unified API | Free $0/mo (100 requests/day) |
| Composio | “1,500+ integrations” | Managed SaaS connectors, OAuth, triggers, Sessions | Free $0/mo (100K tool calls/mo) |
| Arcade | Not stated on the pricing page | Auth runtime plus MCP | Free $0/mo (2,000 auth events, 2,000 tool calls/mo) |
Every rival figure is quoted from that company’s own live public page, checked on 4 September 2026. Where a company does not publish a number, the cell says so rather than guessing. Do not read the price row as like-for-like: a ToolRouter paid call, a Monid call, a ToolRoute request, a Composio tool call and an Arcade auth event are five different units of work.
Read the full comparison, including deployment options and what we left out
What does ToolRouter cost?
- Free tools cost nothing and stay free. There is no trial window and no credit card before a free tool runs.
- Paid tools cost the provider’s price plus a flat $0.005 platform fee per call. What the provider charges varies by tool: a search is cents, an image or a video costs whatever that model costs.
- Failed paid calls are never charged.
- Credits are bought as top-ups and never expire. Topping up carries a 5.5% purchase fee, minimum $0.80 — that fee is how ToolRouter makes money, rather than by marking up the tools.
- Lite ($9/mo) and Plus ($19/mo) add monthly credits, more saved secrets and higher rate limits. They do not unlock tools: every tool is available on the free plan.
- Bring your own provider key and ToolRouter charges 5% of the provider cost, minimum $0.001, instead of the service cost.
Full detail on the pricing page.
Questions people ask about the OpenRouter for tools
Is ToolRouter a competitor to OpenRouter?
No. OpenRouter routes prompts to models; ToolRouter routes tool calls to hosted tools. Most people who use one have a reason to use both, and neither replaces the other.
Do I need an OpenRouter account to use ToolRouter?
No. ToolRouter works with any MCP client — Claude, ChatGPT, Grok, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code, Gemini CLI — whether or not the model behind it came from OpenRouter.
How many tools does ToolRouter have?
254 tools and 1,345 skills as of 3 September 2026. A tool is a product area, such as Web Search or Generate Video; a skill is one callable operation inside it, such as search or text_to_video.
Can an agent use ToolRouter without me signing up?
Yes. Connector, MCP and CLI setups provision an account on first call, and free tools run straight away. Claiming the account is only needed for credits, billing, saved secrets and the dashboard.
Which assistants can connect to ToolRouter?
Claude, ChatGPT, Grok on grok.com, Grok Build, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, OpenClaw and other compatible MCP clients. Grok Bot has a separate, account-dependent setup path.
What happens to my data and my keys?
Provider keys you supply are used for the call and discarded, never stored. Team accounts can turn on a PII filter that blocks customer personal data in tool inputs and redacts it from outputs.