API & Models

OpenRouter

API keys, models, and spend: everything you need to know.

What is OpenRouter?

OpenRouter is a model routing API that gives you access to hundreds of AI models from Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek, and others through a single account and API key. You pay only for what you use at each provider's rate.

Coffee Coach AI uses your personal OpenRouter account. Your roast telemetry goes directly from your computer to OpenRouter and then to the model provider.

Your roast data stays yours. Coffee Coach AI has no servers and no Coffee Coach account. We never receive, store, sell, or see your roast data. We could not anyway: nothing is sent to us or transmitted to us, and we have no visibility into your data at all, ever.

Getting your API key

1
Create a free account at openrouter.ai
2
Go to Keys in your dashboard
3
Click Create key and name it “Coffee Coach AI”
4
Copy the key (starts with sk-or-v1-…)
5
Paste it into the Coffee Coach AI onboarding wizard or Settings screen
6
Coffee Coach AI validates it before storing it in the macOS Keychain or Windows Credential Locker

Your key is secured in the macOS Keychain or Windows Credential Locker and is used only for OpenRouter API calls. It is never sent to Coffee Coach AI because there is no Coffee Coach AI server to receive it.

Controlling your spend

Set a monthly limit

In your OpenRouter account, go to Settings → Limits and set a monthly credit cap. Once hit, API calls stop until you raise the limit or the month resets.

Monitor usage

OpenRouter's dashboard shows token usage and cost per model and per request.

Typical cost

A 12-minute roast (~48 API calls) costs less than $0.01 with Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite. Daily roasting for a month is unlikely to exceed $0.50.

Recommended models

These models are marked as recommended in the Coffee Coach AI Settings model picker.

Model	Best for	Est. cost/roast	Notes
Google Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite Default	Daily roasting	< $0.01	Fastest, cheapest, strong reasoning. Default for a reason.
OpenAI GPT-4.1 Nano Recommended	Alternative	~$0.01	Slightly different coaching voice, comparable cost.
DeepSeek V3.2 Recommended	Budget power users	< $0.01	Surprisingly capable at very low cost.
Google Gemma 3n E2B Recommended	Experimentation	< $0.01	Fast and compact; less consistent on nuanced RoR reasoning.

Google Gemini 2.5 Flash LiteDefault

Best forDaily roasting

Est. cost/roast< $0.01

Fastest, cheapest, strong reasoning. Default for a reason.

OpenAI GPT-4.1 NanoRecommended

Best forAlternative

Est. cost/roast~$0.01

Slightly different coaching voice, comparable cost.

DeepSeek V3.2Recommended

Best forBudget power users

Est. cost/roast< $0.01

Surprisingly capable at very low cost.

Google Gemma 3n E2BRecommended

Best forExperimentation

Est. cost/roast< $0.01

Fast and compact; less consistent on nuanced RoR reasoning.

Other models

Larger models(GPT-4o, Claude Sonnet, Gemini 2.5 Pro)

ProsRicher, more nuanced advice; better at subtle RoR pattern detection.

Cons$0.10–$0.50+ per roast; higher latency means notifications arrive later.

Best forPost-roast analysis, not live coaching.

Reasoning / thinking models(o3-mini, DeepSeek R1)

ProsStrong multi-step reasoning.

Cons20–60 second response times; notifications arrive after the moment has passed.

Best forPost-roast analysis only.

Smaller models(Qwen, Mistral Small)

ProsLowest cost.

ConsLess consistent; may produce vague or generic advice.

Best forExperimentation.

For live coaching: pick a model that responds in under 3 seconds and costs under $0.05/roast. Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite is the default for a reason. For post-roast analysis, use whatever gives the richest output, since latency doesn't matter.

Ready to get started? Create your OpenRouter account, then download Coffee Coach AI for Mac or Windows.

Create OpenRouter account →

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