LLM API Providers · reliability comparison
OpenRouter vs xAI API: which is more reliable? (2026)
xAI API is more reliable than OpenRouter, scoring 82.0 vs 62.9 out of 100. Over the last 90 days OpenRouter reported 10 incidents and xAI API reported 5, with effective uptime of 99.44% and 99.76% respectively. xAI API resolves incidents faster on average (1h 10m).
Data updated Nov 1, 2026 · How we score
| Metric | OpenRouter | xAI API |
|---|---|---|
| Reliability score | 62.9 | 82.0 |
| Rank (LLM API providers) | #8 | #5 |
| Uptime (90 days) | 99.44% | 99.76% |
| Incidents (90 days) | 10 | 5 |
| Partial / major outages | 2 | 5 |
| Avg time to resolve | 6h 48m | 1h 10m |
| Outages we detected | 0 | 0 |
| Transparency score | 100/100 | 100/100 |
Where OpenRouter and xAI API differ
- OpenRouter reported 2× as many incidents as xAI API over the last 90 days (10 vs 5).
- xAI API had 5 partial or major outages, compared with 2 for OpenRouter.
- xAI API fixes problems faster: 1h 10m on average, against 6h 48m for OpenRouter (5.8× quicker).
- OpenRouter's longest outage on record lasted 2h 10m (Oct 25, 2026); xAI API's lasted 3h 39m (Sep 3, 2026).
90-day uptime
OpenRouter
xAI API
- No incidents
- Degraded
- Partial outage
- Major outage
- No data
Recent OpenRouter incidents
- MaintenanceOct 26, 2026 · resolved in 6d 1h
Affected: Web & Application Services
- Partial outageOct 26, 2026 · resolved in 12m
Affected: Chat (/api/v1/chat/completions)
- Major outageOct 25, 2026 · resolved in 2h 10m
Video webhooks are not being calledofficial update ↗
Affected: Video (/api/v1/videos)
- Degraded performanceOct 15, 2026 · resolved in 1d 13h
Activity logs, usage metrics reporting are experiencing delays
Affected: Web & Application Services
- Degraded performanceOct 14, 2026 · resolved in 42m
Increased errors and latency on API requests in the US Pacific Northwest
Affected: Chat (/api/v1/chat/completions)
- Degraded performanceOct 8, 2026 · resolved in 6h 38m
Usage Reporting Delays in Web App
Affected: Web & Application Services
Recent xAI API incidents
- Partial outageOct 24, 2026 · resolved in <1m
- Major outageSep 22, 2026 · resolved in 26m
[Global (api.x.ai)] Outages across API, Grok.com, and Grok Build
- Partial outageSep 10, 2026 · resolved in 12m
- Major outageSep 3, 2026 · resolved in 3h 39m
- Partial outageAug 17, 2026 · resolved in 1h 31m
Other LLM API providers to consider
- Perplexity API · #1 · 99.94% uptime
- Cohere · #2 · 99.94% uptime
- Groq · #3 · 99.94% uptime
- Cerebras Inference · #4 · 99.88% uptime