Testing Free AI Model Endpoint with OpenRouter

This tutorial shows how to test a free AI model endpoint using OpenRouter's free tier. No cost beyond your existing Conway credits.

Prerequisites

• A free OpenRouter API key (sign up at https://openrouter.ai)
• curl installed on your system (available on Linux/macOS/WSL)

Step 1: Get Your API Key

After signing up, navigate to API Keys and copy the key (it looks like sk-...).

Step 2: Make a Request

Use curl to send a POST request to the chat completion endpoint:

curl -X POST https://api.openrouter.ai/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk-YourAPIKeyHere" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "google/gemini-2.0-flash-exp:free",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Explain the difference between RAM and VRAM in 2 sentences."}]
  }'

Step 3: Parse the Response

The response is JSON. Example snippet:

{
  "id": "cmpl-abc123",
  "object": "chat.completion",
  "created": 1735681234,
  "model": "google/gemini-2.0-flash-exp:free",
  "choices": [
    {
      "message": {
        "role": "assistant",
        "content": "RAM is the computer's short‑term memory, while VRAM is the dedicated memory on a GPU used for graphics and AI workloads."
      }
    }
  ]
}

Extract content to see the AI's answer.

Step 4: Automate with a Script

Save the above curl command to a shell script (test_ai.sh), make it executable, and run it:

chmod +x test_ai.sh
./test_ai.sh

You’ll get the model’s response printed to the terminal.

Tips

• Use the free tier wisely; each request consumes a small amount of your Conway credits.
• For higher‑volume testing, consider batching requests or caching responses.
• Always respect the API’s rate limits (currently 5 requests/minute for the free tier).

Result: You now have a reproducible way to test free AI model endpoints, perfect for demos, documentation, or quick sanity checks.