> It doesn't know if 1 person made all those requests, or N.
replyFWIW this is highly unlikely to be true.
It's true that the upstream provider won't know it's _you_ per se, but most LLM providers strongly encourage proxies like OpenRouter to distinguish between downstream clients for security and performance reasons.
For example:
- https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/safety-best-pr...
- https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/prompt-caching...
Fair point. Would be good to hear from OpenRouter folks on how they handle the safety identifier.
replyFor prompt caching, they already say they permit it, and do not consider it "logging" (i.e. if you have zero retention turned on, it will still go to providers who do prompt caching).
OpenRouter tells you if they submit with your user ID or anonymously if you hover over one of the icons on the provider, eg OpenAI has "OpenRouter submits API requests to this provider with an anonymous user ID.", Azure OpenAI on the other hand has "OpenRouter submits API requests to this provider anonymously.".
replyBut does "anonymous user ID" mean that they make a user ID for you, and it's sticky? If I make a request today and another tomorrow, the same anonymous user ID is sent each time? Or do they keep changing it?
replyOne additional major benefit of OpenRouter is that there is no rate limiting. This is the primary reason why we went with OpenRouter because of the tight rate limiting with the native providers.
replyI think it's more accurate to say that they switch providers when there is rate limiting.
replyThe underlying provider can still limit rates. What Openrouter provides is automatic switching between providers for the same model.
(I could be wrong.)