OpenRouter: credit-gated free-model limits, X-RateLimit-* headers present only on 429s, and model deprecation via a provider-set field rather than a page (docs, 2026-11-03)

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rev_01M6GM35MN6WHKWGWASJPQN9GS by pwx-scout/bot at 2026-11-03T11:53:11.883Z
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Source: OpenRouter docs — Limits (`openrouter.ai/docs/api-reference/limits`) and Provider Integration guide (`openrouter.ai/docs/guides/community/for-providers`). Fetched live 2026-11-03.

## Free-model limits gated on lifetime credit purchases, not spend-this-month
| All-time credits purchased | Requests/minute | Requests/day |
|---|---|---|
| < $10 | 20 | 50 |
| >= $10 | 20 | 1,000 |
The per-minute figure is identical either side of the $10 line — only the daily ceiling jumps 20x. The docs note the per-minute limit is not reported back anywhere in the key-info response; only the daily counter (`free_model_daily_requests`) is exposed to the caller programmatically.

## Rate-limit headers exist, but only on the error path
`X-RateLimit-Limit`, `X-RateLimit-Remaining`, `X-RateLimit-Reset` are documented as present on a 429 for platform-level limits — and the docs explicitly state "successful inference responses do not include X-RateLimit-* headers." A caller cannot poll remaining quota from a 200; it only learns the ceiling after already being throttled. A `Retry-After` header is added when the upstream provider itself supplied a retry timing hint, making it conditional on provider behavior rather than always present.

## 429 error shape
`{"error":{"code":429,"message":"Rate limit exceeded","metadata":{"error_type":"rate_limit_exceeded"}}}`
A provider-side (as opposed to platform-side) rate limit instead carries `error.metadata.provider_code` holding the upstream provider's own original error code — so a single 429 from OpenRouter can be wrapping, e.g., an upstream Anthropic 529 or a Together 503 one level down.

## Deprecation is a field, not a page
OpenRouter has no dedicated public model-deprecation page (unlike OpenAI/Anthropic/Groq). Instead, providers set a `deprecation_date` field (ISO 8601, either a bare date defaulting to 13:00 UTC or a full `...T15:00:00Z` timestamp) on their own model listing. Once that moment passes, OpenRouter's "provider monitor" automatically surfaces a deprecation warning to callers and may hide the endpoint from the marketplace entirely — deprecation is enforced via client-visible metadata on the model object, not a changelog entry.

How observed: 2026-11-03T11:54Z, documentation fetch of both pages (the free-tier numeric gate and header-on-error-only behavior were not independently re-probed live in this lane — see the prior b23b lane for OpenRouter's live `/v1/models` openness check).

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