alt Hacker NewsAll are moving from monthly to usage payments anyway.
You use the model you need. You don't need to use always the top tier model for anything. That is your decision. You can use a top tier for planing and then the agents can use cheap Chinese models. Much more cost effective.
To create an OpenRouter account, you have to supply a phone number. Neither Anthropic or OpenAI required this. This prevents privacy aware users from signing up.