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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. pinakea currently uses DeepSeek V4 Flash for online text generation and Qwen3 Embedding 8B for embeddings through OpenRouter, without asking you to create separate provider accounts.

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 a Zero Data Retention provider. It does not pass through pinakea servers.

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.

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

Where the key is used

In Online Mode, OpenRouter is used for the full cloud pipeline: embeddings, summaries, titles, tags, chat, and AI tag consolidation.

In Mixed Mode, the high-volume automatic pipeline stages can run locally on your Mac. Chat and AI tag consolidation still use OpenRouter.

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

Cost control

OpenRouter costs depend on content length, provider pricing, and how much work is regenerated. 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

When you use cloud AI, the content needed for that request travels from your Mac to OpenRouter and then to a provider using OpenRouter’s Zero Data Retention routing policy. OpenRouter may still process account and request metadata under its own terms, so use a dedicated key and OpenRouter’s spend controls if you want the cleanest separation.

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

For the full data-handling model, see Privacy.