Gemini 4 Hydrogen vs OpenRouter

Gemini 4 Hydrogen 40

Model reading for gemini-4-hydrogen on the Gemini API. Platform facts are the Gemini API listing's (gemini-api, re-read 1 November), carried over as RULES.md allows for a model on an already graded platform. No machine payment protocol (0). Prices published in Google's announcement without a login, $1.50 input and $7.50 output per million tokens, flat across the window; the Gemini API pricing page, now at aistudio.google.com, is still to be read for Hydrogen's row (20). A free tier with no card: Google's announcement puts Hydrogen on all tiers of the Gemini API, and the free tier needs no billing account per the gemini-api listing; its limits for Hydrogen are on that pricing page (20). A Google account and AI Studio for a key (0). 0 + 20 + 20 + 0 = 40.

OpenRouter 60

No machine payment protocol found in the docs index. Credits can be bought in USDC through Coinbase, but calls draw on a prepaid balance (0). Per-token prices published per model without a login (20). 25 or more free models with no card, per the listing (20). Browser sign-up for the first key (0). Management API keys and OAuth PKCE mint keys in code, but only after a person has an account. Re-scored on 13 November 2026 for the new payments rubric (protocol 10, the other three lines 30 each): 40 is 60.

Gemini 4 Hydrogen 50

Model reading for gemini-4-hydrogen on the Gemini API. Platform facts are the Gemini API listing's (gemini-api, re-read 1 November), carried over as RULES.md allows for a model on an already graded platform. Keys bound to a service account and restricted to the Gemini API, with no scopes and a token accepted in the URL (15 of 30, the platform's deduction). Hydrogen is on the free tier, where Google's terms say content is used to improve products and may be read by humans; paid-tier content isn't (10 of 20, the platform's reading; Carbon, paid tier only, got 15). Abuse retention has no number and new paid projects store requests by default since 26 October; Google's prompt-injection figure (2.3 times more resilient on Gray Swan's benchmark) is its own, and the model card says jailbreak resistance is still being improved (5 of 15). Request logs for billed projects (15). security.txt and a reward programme, no certification naming the API (5 of 20). 15 + 10 + 5 + 15 + 5 = 50.

OpenRouter 67

Model reading. Bearer keys with per-key credit limits, Management API keys for creating and rotating keys in code, and OAuth PKCE for user-delegated keys. No permission scopes on keys (25 of 30). OpenRouter doesn't store or use prompts unless you opt in for a 1% discount, but the routing reference, re-read on 1 November 2026, still sets data_collection to 'allow' by default, which admits providers that may store and train on data. An account privacy setting can switch that off, and the docs don't say what a new account starts with (5 of 20). Prompts not stored by default and a per-request zdr filter (15). Request metadata kept for reporting, per-call logs not confirmed (10 of 15). security.txt, read on 1 November 2026, is valid to 12 August 2027 with security@openrouter.ai and a PGP key, and says reports confirmed as high-impact get an invitation to a private HackerOne bug bounty. The private bounty counts as a bounty, as other listings' invitation-only programmes do (activepieces, fireflies, mixpanel). No certification or public advisory was found, so 12, above blockrun-ai's 10 (valid security.txt, no bounty) and below activepieces' 13 (a private bounty and nine public advisories) (12 of 20).

Gemini 4 Hydrogen 45

Model reading for gemini-4-hydrogen on the Gemini API. Platform facts are the Gemini API listing's (gemini-api, re-read 1 November), carried over as RULES.md allows for a model on an already graded platform. Status page at aistudio.google.com/status with no readable components or history (10 of 20) and no readable incident record (5 of 30). Rate-limit tiers and spend limits published, per-model limits in AI Studio (5 of 15). Backoff guidance for 429 and 503 and SDK retries (15). No SLA (0). Google Cloud's release notes and model page call Hydrogen generally available, a short-term release, under the same model ID; the Gemini API pages read don't name a stage, so full marks rest on Cloud's statement (10, a judgement call; Carbon, with no stage stated anywhere, got 5). 10 + 5 + 5 + 15 + 0 + 10 = 45.

OpenRouter 55

Status page at status.openrouter.ai, which rendered only in a browser with its feed and JSON paths answering 403 on 1 and 2 October. On 1 November its robots.txt answered 403 AccessDenied, so the host is treated as blocked and the page was not read (10 of 20, per the 2 October check, and 5 for the incident line, no readable history). The limits page gives 20 requests a minute on free models, 50 a day below $10 of lifetime purchases and 1,000 a day above, no platform cap on paid models, and a key endpoint that reports what's left (15). The errors page says 429, 503 and 402 responses from the in-flight spending budget carry Retry-After, tells clients to honour it, and says the official SDKs already do (15). The pricing page lists 'Contractual SLAs' for Enterprise without publishing terms, which we count as no published SLA (0). The chat completions API is GA (10). Model fallbacks through a models list soften an upstream outage, which this checklist doesn't score.

Gemini 4 Hydrogen 85

Model reading for gemini-4-hydrogen on the Gemini API. Platform facts are the Gemini API listing's (gemini-api, re-read 1 November), carried over as RULES.md allows for a model on an already graded platform. Discovery document for GenerateContent (20 of 25). llms.txt with Markdown twins (10). The Cloud developer guide says what Hydrogen takes, every parameter that's ignored or returns 400, the thought-signature rules and how to migrate from Gemini 3.8 Flash, though it doesn't document forced calls (15 of 20). Structured output to a JSON Schema with some keywords not enforced (10 of 15). Examples and an errors page (15). Dated changelog and model versions (15). 20 + 10 + 15 + 10 + 15 + 15 = 85.

OpenRouter 90

Public OpenAPI document at openrouter.ai/docs/openapi/openapi.yaml (25). llms.txt with Markdown twins (10). Reference not read in full (15 of 20). Structured outputs documented, enforcement depends on the upstream model (10 of 15). Errors and debugging page and examples throughout (15). An API changelog generated from OpenAPI diffs on every release, with a human-reviewed Breaking section and migration notes, dated entries to 29 October 2026, and an API versioning page (15).

Gemini 4 Hydrogen 90

Model reading for gemini-4-hydrogen on the Gemini API. Platform facts are the Gemini API listing's (gemini-api, re-read 1 November), carried over as RULES.md allows for a model on an already graded platform. Function calling, with forced calls by FunctionCallingConfig on the API (20). Structured output to a response_schema, listed as supported on the Cloud model page (13 of 15). Implicit caching on prefixes of 4,096 tokens or more with durable caching on by default and explicit caches not supported, per the Cloud model page; the announcement names no cached-input price (12 of 15). 1,048,576 tokens shared between input and output, with background long decode up to 1M (15). Batch at half price on the platform (10). Python and JavaScript SDKs, and an OpenAI-compatible Chat Completions surface (10). Error codes with backoff guidance (10 of 15). 20 + 13 + 12 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 10 = 90.

OpenRouter 85

Model reading of the checklist (tool use, structured output, caching, context, batch, SDKs, errors). Tool calling documented, behaviour depends on the routed model (15 of 20). Structured outputs depend on the upstream model (10 of 15). Prompt caching documented, discount set by each provider (10 of 15). Routes to models with 1M-token context, a judgement call since a router has no default model (15). Batch API, usually half price per the listing (10). Official SDKs in TypeScript, Python and Go (10). Errors and debugging page (15).