OpenRouter Alternative for India

Why Indian teams switch from OpenRouter to unoblox

OpenRouter aggregates a wide model catalog behind one API — genuinely useful — but it invoices internationally, so Indian teams face payment friction and can't claim GST input-tax credit on the spend. unoblox offers a comparable model roster billed entirely in rupees, with a monthly GST invoice from an Indian entity and infrastructure hosted in India.

Side-by-side

Factor	OpenRouter	unoblox
Billing	International	₹, monthly GST invoice
Data residency	International	India (Yotta)
Models	OpenAI, Anthropic, open-source	Same families: GPT, Claude, DeepSeek, Qwen, Llama, Gemma
API style	OpenAI-compatible	OpenAI-compatible
Free tier	Limited, credit-based	Qwen3 1.7B at ₹0
Support	Email	In-app + email

Migrate in about two minutes

Your existing client code is reusable — only the endpoint and key differ:

# OLD (OpenRouter)
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(
    api_key="sk-or-v1-...",
    base_url="https://openrouter.io/api/v1"
)

# NEW (unoblox) — everything else is identical
client = OpenAI(
    api_key="ub-gw-...",
    base_url="https://api.unoblox.ai/v1"
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="openai/gpt-4o",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}]
)

No rewrite needed — streaming, tool calls, and JSON mode all carry over.

What you gain

• GST invoice. Claim input-tax credit on every rupee spent — a real saving for GST-registered businesses.
• No international payment step. Your accounting team works in rupees from day one, not a foreign-currency statement.
• Data sovereignty. Hosted in India, which answers DPDP and internal security-review questions before they're raised.
• Same model breadth, ₹-priced. GPT, Claude, DeepSeek, Qwen, and Llama, all on /models with live rates.
• A genuine free tier. Qwen3 1.7B costs nothing, so prototyping doesn't need a card on file.
• Standard request parameters carry over. temperature, top_p, stream, and function/tool-calling schemas work exactly as they do today — nothing to remap.

Frequently asked questions

Will my existing key work immediately after I sign up? Yes — create an account, copy your ub-gw-… key, and swap base_url and api_key in your client. No API redesign needed.

Do you support OpenRouter's extra request headers? Streaming, tool calls, and JSON mode are all supported. Provider-specific extras outside the OpenAI spec may not carry over — email support@unoblox.ai if one is load-bearing for you.

Are unoblox's ₹ rates competitive with OpenRouter's? Check /models for live rates on both sides. Because billing is ₹-only end to end, there's also no international payment overhead to net out of the comparison.

Can I keep my OpenRouter account as a backup? Yes — both can coexist in your config while you migrate traffic gradually.

What if my app needs very low latency? unoblox typically responds in under 500ms from India; for anything faster, our open-weight models (Qwen3, Llama, Gemma) are also available to self-host.

What happens to my rate limits when I switch? Your unoblox account tier sets RPM/TPM directly, so there's no separate per-model quota to track the way some OpenRouter routes require.

Get started in rupees → https://unoblox.ai/sign-in