The best OpenRouter alternative for teams in China
Short answer: if your team is based in China and needs a compliant paper trail — 增值税专用发票 (VAT special invoice), RMB settlement, no cross-border card friction — ApiLink is the OpenRouter alternative built specifically for that. Same OpenAI-compatible API, the same model catalog (we sync it directly from OpenRouter), and the invoicing/billing pieces OpenRouter doesn’t offer at all.
Why OpenRouter is hard to use from inside China
OpenRouter is a genuinely good product — wide model selection, mature failover, an active community. The friction Chinese teams hit isn’t about the API surface, it’s everything around payment and paperwork:
- USD-only billing on a foreign card.That means cross-border transaction fees on every top-up, and for a company account, a paper trail your finance team can’t easily reconcile against domestic tax filings.
- No 发票 (fapiao).If you’re expensing this through a registered company in China, a bank statement in USD isn’t something your accountant can file as a deductible expense. You need an actual VAT invoice.
- Forex quota friction.Individuals topping up personal cards run into China’s $50,000/year foreign exchange purchase limit if this becomes a recurring business cost — most people don’t hit this until it’s already a problem.
Side by side
| OpenRouter | ApiLink | |
|---|---|---|
| Model catalog | 400+ models, all major providers | Same catalog — synced directly from OpenRouter |
| API format | OpenAI-compatible | OpenAI-compatible (drop-in — change baseURL and key) |
| Currency at checkout | USD only | USD + RMB |
| 增值税专用发票 (VAT invoice) | No | Yes |
| Minimum top-up | $10 | $5 |
| Free trial credit | Yes, with limits | Yes, no advertising, no limits |
| Anthropic cache write premium | Passed through to you (1.25×) | Absorbed by us (you pay 1.0×) |
| /v1/responses (Codex CLI) | No | Yes |
The model catalog row is the one that used to matter most and doesn’t anymore — ApiLink mirrors OpenRouter’s full model list automatically, so switching costs you nothing on model selection. Everything below that row is the actual decision.
Switching over
If you’re already calling OpenRouter through the OpenAI SDK (or any OpenAI-compatible client), the migration is two lines:
- Change baseURL to
https://api.apilink.io/v1. - Swap the API key for one generated in the ApiLink dashboard.
Model names stay the same — anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-5, openai/gpt-4o, google/gemini-2.5-proand so on all resolve exactly like they do on OpenRouter, because that’s literally where the catalog comes from.
Frequently asked questions
Is ApiLink an OpenRouter reseller?
No. ApiLink runs its own gateway infrastructure and syncs OpenRouter’s public model catalog so the model list matches — but billing, invoicing, and the actual request routing are independently operated.
Can I get a 增值税专用发票 for API spending on ApiLink?
Yes — this is the main reason teams switch. ApiLink issues proper VAT invoices for recharges; OpenRouter has no equivalent since it only bills in USD with no Chinese tax documentation.
Do I lose access to any models by switching from OpenRouter to ApiLink?
No — ApiLink syncs OpenRouter’s full model catalog automatically, so the model list you see is the same one available on OpenRouter at the time you switch.
Does ApiLink support Codex CLI, Cursor, and other OpenAI-compatible tools?
Yes. ApiLink implements the OpenAI Responses API in addition to Chat Completions, which Codex CLI specifically requires — most gateways, including OpenRouter, don’t support this endpoint yet.
The honest caveat
ApiLink has been operating for a few months, not years. If you need a gateway with a long public incident history and a large community for support, OpenRouter has that track record and we don’t — yet. What we do have is the specific thing OpenRouter structurally can’t offer a China-based company: a real invoice. If that’s the blocker keeping your finance team from approving the tool your engineers already want to use, that’s the gap we exist to close.