Azure AI Foundry vs OpenRouter
Same workloads, both price lists, refreshed daily. On shared line items today: Azure AI Foundry is cheaper on 3 of 30 shared models (input or output price), OpenRouter on 8.
Azure AI Foundry
OpenAI models with Azure enterprise controls plus a broad third-party model catalog. The compliance-friendly way to run GPT-class models.
- Azure compliance/enterprise controls
- OpenAI models with SLAs
- Provisioned throughput
OpenRouter
One API key for 340+ models across every major provider, with automatic failover and pass-through pricing. The fastest way to hedge provider risk or A/B models without new integrations.
- 340+ models, one integration
- Automatic provider failover
- Pass-through pricing, small platform fee
Shared models, priced by both
List prices refreshed 2026-08-23 ยท input $/1M tokens| Model | Azure AI Foundry in/out | OpenRouter in/out | Cheaper input |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ministral 3 3B 2512 | $0.040 / $0.040 | $0.100 / $0.100 | Azure AI Foundry |
| GPT-5 Nano | $0.050 / $0.400 | $0.050 / $0.400 | tie |
| GPT-4.1 Nano | $0.100 / $0.400 | $0.100 / $0.400 | tie |
| Phi-4 | $0.125 / $0.500 | $0.070 / $0.140 | OpenRouter |
| GPT-OSS 120B | $0.150 / $0.600 | $0.180 / $0.800 | Azure AI Foundry |
| Mistral Nemo | $0.150 / $0.150 | $0.019 / $0.030 | OpenRouter |
| GPT-4o-Mini | $0.150 / $0.600 | $0.150 / $0.600 | tie |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | $0.190 / $0.510 | $0.050 / $0.101 | OpenRouter |
| GPT-5.4 Nano | $0.200 / $1.25 | $0.200 / $1.25 | tie |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | $0.200 / $1.20 | $0.200 / $1.20 | tie |
| GPT-5 Mini | $0.250 / $2.00 | $0.250 / $2.00 | tie |
| Llama 3.1 8B | $0.300 / $0.610 | $0.050 / $0.080 | OpenRouter |
| GPT-4.1 Mini | $0.400 / $1.60 | $0.400 / $1.60 | tie |
| GPT-3.5 Turbo | $0.500 / $1.50 | $1.50 / $2.00 | Azure AI Foundry |
| DeepSeek V3.2 | $0.580 / $1.68 | $0.280 / $0.400 | OpenRouter |
| Kimi K2.5 | $0.600 / $3.00 | $0.600 / $3.00 | tie |
| GPT Audio Mini | $0.600 / $2.40 | $0.600 / $2.40 | tie |
| Llama 3.3 70B | $0.710 / $0.710 | $0.100 / $0.320 | OpenRouter |
| GPT-5.4 Mini | $0.750 / $4.50 | $0.750 / $4.50 | tie |
| Kimi K2.6 | $0.950 / $4.00 | $0.950 / $4.00 | tie |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | $1.00 / $5.00 | $1.00 / $5.00 | tie |
| Mistral Small 4 | $1.00 / $3.00 | $0.150 / $0.600 | OpenRouter |
| Llama-3-70b | $1.10 / $0.370 | $0.590 / $0.790 | OpenRouter |
| o3 Mini | $1.10 / $4.40 | $1.10 / $4.40 | tie |
| o4 Mini | $1.10 / $4.40 | $1.10 / $4.40 | tie |
| GPT-5 | $1.25 / $10.00 | $1.25 / $10.00 | tie |
| GPT-5.1 | $1.25 / $10.00 | $1.25 / $10.00 | tie |
| Grok 4.3 | $1.25 / $2.50 | $1.25 / $2.50 | tie |
| GPT-5-Chat | $1.25 / $10.00 | $1.25 / $10.00 | tie |
| DeepSeek R1 | $1.35 / $5.40 | $0.550 / $2.19 | OpenRouter |
Cheaper-on-count is a tally of listed prices, not a quality verdict: throughput, reliability and quantization differ between providers. Disclosure.