To create an OpenRouter account, you have to supply a phone number. Neither Anthropic or OpenAI required this. This prevents privacy aware users from signing up.
replyAnthropic request ID verification and OpenAI requires phone number in Europe. I don't know about other parts of the world, but I don't see any issues with OpenRouter.
replyAgain, neither Anthropic or OpenAI asked for PII. Only my payment information. Open Router requires a phone to get an account, which is why I'll never have one.
replyI use OpenRouter all the time on an account for which I never supplied a phone number, email address, or anything of the kind. Maybe that was because I used an Ethereum wallet to authenticate, and paid in cryptocurrency (well, if USDC counts as "cryptocurrency"). Which admittedly makes OpenRouter's nosebleed prices even higher in effect, and supports some organizations I'd really rather not. And it's an oldish account; maybe you couldn't do that today.
replyIn fact, I don't actually use it, but as an experiment I once set up and fooled around with an OpenRouter account over Tor. It did demand an email address, and I gave it a Proton account also set up over Tor. Both were paid for with anonymous cryptocurrency: Monero gatewayed via some random exchanger.
Whereas I never signed up for an Anthropic account because the first screen I hit demanded a phone number. I mean that was the only thing on the screen, and you weren't going anywhere until you provided it. It's been quite a while, though.
Perhaps there are different paths to getting accounts.
It's possible that there are geographic differences. I don't dispute your experience, just sharing mine. It would be nice to experiment with their platform.
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