who pays
Human developer
AI agent
pricing
Routing fee
Pass-through
The token toll booth: how an AI-token purchase becomes a settlement event
1
who pays
human developer
2
per-token rate
OpenRouter
the toll booth
0
0
0
0
0
0
3
300+ models
70+ providers
billed tokens return
4
one bill
all provider spend
5
provider cost
remitted
markup kept
routing fee
6
payment rails — Stripe
the settlement clears here