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Getting an OpenRouter key
Connect an account, add credit, set a limit. Five minutes, one-off.
OpenRouter is a single gateway to hundreds of AI models. One account and one key gets you DeepSeek, Gemini, Claude, GPT, Grok, GLM and the rest, billed at each provider's own rates with no subscription.
Why connect your own
You can write without one — the free tier runs on a shared pool of free models, and it is the right way to try the product. A key of your own is the upgrade: the full catalogue of 400+ models, steadier speed, and one voice kept across a whole novel rather than whichever free model is least busy today. You pay wholesale for exactly what you use, you can switch to a model that costs a fraction of another mid-novel, and no plan limit decides how much you are allowed to write this month. It also means we never have to mark anything up.
Step by step
- In webnovellm, press Connect OpenRouter — it is on the setup card and in Settings. You will land on OpenRouter's own page.
- Sign in or sign up there (Google sign-in is quickest).
- The approval screen has a Credit limit box. Fill it in — this is the moment to do it, and it caps what this key can ever spend no matter what goes wrong later. Then press Authorize and you are sent straight back, connected. No copying, no pasting.
- Open Credits and add some. $5 is more than enough to start — on a cheap model that is hundreds of chapters. Credits do not expire.
On a second device
Connect again rather than copying the key across. Each device ends up with its own key, so a lost laptop is one key to revoke and nothing else to change — and no secret ever has to travel between your devices.
Good practice
- Always set the credit limit on the approval screen. It caps what that key can ever spend, which is the single best protection you have here. If you skipped it, Settings will say so, and you can add one from Keys afterwards.
- Use a separate key per app, so you can revoke this one without breaking anything else.
- Watch the first few chapters in the writer's spend panel to calibrate what your settings actually cost.
Where the key lives
In your browser's local storage. It is sent with each generation request so the call can be made on your behalf, and it is never stored in our database or logged. Clearing your browser data removes it, and you would paste it in again.