Skip to main content

AI, OpenRouter and Pricing

OpenRouter and BYOK

pinakea uses a Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) model for cloud AI. You create your own OpenRouter account, add your own API key in pinakea, and pay OpenRouter directly for the model usage.

pinakea does not bundle AI credits, resell tokens, or add a markup.

What OpenRouter does

OpenRouter gives one account and one API key for many AI model providers. You choose models in Settings → AI.

This keeps the AI cost relationship direct:

  • your Mac sends the request to OpenRouter,
  • OpenRouter routes it to the relevant provider,
  • OpenRouter bills your OpenRouter account,
  • pinakea never sees your OpenRouter bill and does not add a surcharge.

Why BYOK

BYOK is a small setup step, but it keeps costs visible and under your control.

  • No pinakea markup. You pay OpenRouter at OpenRouter’s rates.
  • No bundled credits. There are no opaque token packs or hidden exchange rates.
  • Spend limits. OpenRouter lets you set limits on API keys so usage stops at the cap you choose.
  • Usage visibility. OpenRouter shows key usage in its dashboard, and pinakea shows current-month OpenRouter key usage plus recent app-recorded request cost in the status bar.
  • Direct data path. Your content goes from your Mac to OpenRouter to the selected provider. It does not pass through pinakea servers. pinakea asks OpenRouter for ZDR routing on every content request.

For the clearest in-app usage number, create a dedicated OpenRouter API key for pinakea. If you share the same key with other tools, OpenRouter’s key-wide monthly usage will include those tools too.

Setup

  1. Create an account at openrouter.ai.
  2. Add credit in OpenRouter.
  3. Create an API key in OpenRouter’s Keys area.
  4. Set a spending limit on that key if you want a hard cap.
  5. Paste the key into Settings -> AI -> Global in pinakea.
  6. Optional: pick Background and On-demand models for this Set in Settings → AI.

pinakea validates the key and then uses it for cloud AI features.

Where the key is used

OpenRouter is used for embeddings, automatic item summaries, titles, tags, chat, full item summaries, and day/daypart summaries.

See LLM Cost (OpenRouter) for the current cost breakdown.

Cost control

Costs depend on how much you process and which models you pick. Cheaper models keep large libraries affordable. pinakea does not publish a fixed cost calculator because the real number comes from OpenRouter usage.

Use these controls:

  • set a spending limit on the API key,
  • use a dedicated key for pinakea,
  • watch pinakea’s status bar,
  • check OpenRouter’s dashboard,
  • avoid automatic top-up unless you intentionally want it.

If the key runs out of credit or reaches its limit, OpenRouter returns a payment-required error and pinakea shows the issue instead of silently continuing.

Privacy

Items you add are processed automatically through OpenRouter. What is needed for each request travels from your Mac to OpenRouter and then to the selected provider. pinakea sends provider.zdr=true with every OpenRouter content request, asking OpenRouter to use providers that advertise Zero Data Retention. This is a routing request rather than an absolute guarantee about provider conduct; OpenRouter may also process account and request metadata under its own terms.

pinakea does not proxy cloud AI requests through its own servers. Your original files, local database, search index, summaries, and chat history are stored on your Mac.

For the full data-handling model, see Privacy.