Janitor AI Router pricing: what janitor+ Router costs, how the Router balance bills, and whether credits refund

How much does the Janitor AI Router cost?

The Router costs whatever your tokens cost, on top of a subscription you have to keep paying.

Janitor's help desk answers the question directly in its own FAQ: "Usage is billed per token at the price shown for each model. There's no separate Router fee beyond your janitor+ subscription and your token usage." The same article states that "Router is currently limited to janitor+ subscribers", so the subscription is not optional. It is the entry ticket.

That subscription is $12.99 a month. We re-read Apple's in-app purchase list for the official app, Janitor: Interactive Stories (app 6692609366, seller JanitorAI, INC), on 26 September 2026. It now shows two entries, both named "Janitor+ Monthly" and both $12.99. In August it showed one. Same name, same price, so there is still one plan at one price; there is simply a second product ID behind it. The list contains no credit pack, no wallet top-up and no annual plan.

So the honest total for a Router user is: $12.99 a month, plus a wallet balance that goes down with every message, at a rate that depends on the model you picked. Janitor sweetens the start with $5 of launch credits for subscribers, and a 10% discount on "some of the most popular models", which the help desk says is already reflected in the listed rate. Neither changes the structure. The $12.99 is a floor.

• janitor+ is required: Router is "limited to janitor+ subscribers"
• janitor+ is $12.99 a month, two identical Apple entries, read 26 September 2026
• Router usage is billed per token at the rate shown for each model
• No separate Router fee, per Janitor's own FAQ
• $5 launch credits for subscribers, 10% off some popular models

Janitor+ vs janitor+ Router: which one are you actually paying for?

Both, if you use the Router, and this is the part people get wrong.

janitor+ is the subscription. In Janitor's own list it buys "5x more context for better memory", "priority access for faster replies" and "monthly swipes with our best models", on top of everything in the free tier. The janitor+ Router is a separate feature that sits inside that subscription and lets you send messages to third-party models such as DeepSeek, Claude, Gemini, Grok and GLM instead of JLLM.

Janitor is unusually direct about which one it thinks you should use. The help article carries a note in bold: "Router is not a replacement for JLLM+. For everyday roleplay and conversation, JLLM+ is still the recommended chat model. Router exists to give you additional options." Its FAQ answers "Should I switch from JLLM+ to Router?" with "Not necessarily."

Read plainly, that means the $12.99 covers your everyday chat, and the Router is a pay-as-you-go extra for the conversations where you want a different model. Nobody pays for the Router instead of janitor+. You pay for janitor+, and then, if you want, you also pay for the Router. That is why comparison pages that list "janitor+" and "Router" as two alternative plans with two prices are describing something that does not exist.

• janitor+ is the subscription; Router is a metered feature inside it
• Janitor: "Router is not a replacement for JLLM+"
• JLLM+ stays the recommended model for everyday roleplay, per Janitor
• Router is an extra you pay per token, never an alternative plan
• You cannot buy Router access without janitor+

What happens to your Router balance if you cancel janitor+?

Janitor's public documentation does not say, and that silence is the most important fact on this page.

Here is what it does say. First: "Router is currently limited to janitor+ subscribers." Second: "Router credits are non-refundable except where required by law." Put those two sentences side by side. If only subscribers can use the Router, and the credits cannot be refunded, then money left in the wallet when you cancel has nowhere to go until you subscribe again. The help desk never states that outcome in so many words. It does not have to; it follows from the two rules it does state.

Two independent write-ups report the same thing from users who read Janitor's Router Credits terms inside the app: unspent credits stay locked behind an active subscription. Both authors add that they could not read the terms themselves because the page returned a firewall block. We hit the same wall. On 26 September 2026, janitorai.com returned the identical 405,372 byte "Access Restricted" page for the home page, for janitorai.com/plus and for invented paths, to plain requests and to a full headless browser, and the Internet Archive was offline when we tried it as a third route. So nobody outside a logged-in account can currently check the governing document.

The practical rule is easy. Treat the wallet as money you will spend while subscribed, not as a balance you own. Top up in small amounts, and spend the balance down before you cancel. The $5 launch credit has its own clock as well: the help desk says free credits "expire one year after being claimed".

• Janitor's help desk does not state what happens to credits on cancellation
• Router is subscriber-only and credits are non-refundable, both in Janitor's words
• Together those two rules leave an unspent balance unusable until you resubscribe
• The Router Credits terms are behind a firewall that blocks outside readers
• Free launch credits expire one year after you claim them

How much does a Janitor Router chat actually cost per day?

Janitor shows the per-token rate for each model only inside the wallet, so we cannot print Janitor's rates. What we can do is show the arithmetic, using a model provider's own published list price as a stand-in, because the structure of the bill matters more than any single rate.

The thing most people miss is that a chat model rereads the conversation on every message. If your chat carries 30,000 tokens of context, which is well inside what janitor+ advertises, each new message sends roughly 30,000 input tokens, not the handful you typed. A hundred messages in an evening is about 3 million input tokens, plus perhaps 30,000 tokens of replies.

Now price that against DeepSeek's own API page, read 26 September 2026. For deepseek-v4-pro, input that misses the cache costs $0.66 per million tokens off-peak and $1.32 at peak; input that hits the cache costs $0.022 off-peak and $0.044 at peak; output is $1.98 off-peak and $3.96 at peak. The same 100-message evening therefore costs about $2.04 if nothing is cached off-peak, about $4.08 if nothing is cached at peak, and about $0.13 if the context is cached. That is a thirtyfold spread for identical chatting, and Janitor does not document whether Router passes cache pricing through.

Peak hours matter more for Americans than the provider's page makes obvious. DeepSeek's peak runs 01:00 to 04:00 and 06:00 to 10:00 UTC on weekdays. In US Eastern daylight time, the first window is 9 p.m. to midnight, which is exactly when most people chat.

None of these are Janitor's numbers, and Router rates for the same model can differ from the provider's list price. The point is the shape: long chats on a strong model are not cents, they can be dollars a night, every night, on top of $12.99.

• Every message resends the whole context, so context size drives the bill
• 30,000 tokens of context x 100 messages is about 3 million input tokens
• At DeepSeek v4-pro list prices that is $0.13 to $4.08 an evening, depending on caching and peak
• DeepSeek peak includes 9 p.m. to midnight US Eastern on weekdays
• Illustration only: Janitor's own Router rates are shown only inside the wallet

Janitor Router vs your own OpenRouter key: which is cheaper?

On money alone, your own key usually wins. On effort, the Router wins, and that is what you are paying for.

The proxy route is what Janitor's heavy users did before July 2026, and Janitor still supports it: its help desk says Router "is offered as an alternative to proxy setups, not as a forced migration". Janitor's own beginner guide to OpenRouter gives two useful numbers: OpenRouter offers "50 free messages every day" on models tagged free, and adding "$10 of credits" raises that to "1,000 messages per day". The proxy route also works on the free Janitor tier. The Router does not.

So compare the two properly. Own key: $0 a month to Janitor, a one-time $10 of OpenRouter credit, and your own API key to manage. Router: $12.99 a month to Janitor, no key, and per-token billing for every message you send to a Router model. If you already run a working proxy and only want JLLM for everyday chat, the Router adds nothing but a second way to spend money. If you have never been able to get a proxy working, and Janitor's help desk has a dedicated OpenRouter error guide for a reason, the Router is the first time a frontier model on Janitor has been one click away.

One more difference, and it is not small: a proxy works in any browser you like, while Router is web only and not in the mobile app at all.

• Own key: no Janitor subscription needed, works on the free tier
• OpenRouter: 50 free messages a day, 1,000 a day after $10 of credits, per Janitor's guide
• Router: $12.99 a month plus per-token usage, no key to manage
• Janitor keeps proxies supported, Router is "not a forced migration"
• The Router's real product is convenience, not a lower price

Can you use the Janitor Router on the mobile app?

No. Janitor's help desk lists the article as "Applies to: janitor+ subscribers, Web only", and its FAQ says "Router is web-only at launch, with mobile support planned." The launch announcement of 30 July says the same.

Apple's listing backs that up from the other side. On 26 September 2026 the only in-app purchases disclosed for the official app were the two $12.99 "Janitor+ Monthly" entries. There is no credit pack, which is what you would expect to see if the app could fund a Router wallet. Apple itemizes every in-app product a developer configures, so its absence is meaningful.

That has a practical consequence for anyone who subscribed on iPhone. You can pay for janitor+ through Apple, but to use the Router you then have to sign in on the web and fund the wallet there, which means two separate charges from two separate merchants for one product. Your janitor+ renewal sits in Apple's subscription list, and your Router top-ups do not.

The app has grown quickly, for the record. It held 4,037 US App Store ratings at 4.49 stars on 26 September 2026, against 1,460 ratings at 4.0 stars on 23 August, on version 2.5.0 released 15 September.

• Router is web only, in Janitor's own words
• Apple lists no credit pack for the Janitor app, only janitor+ at $12.99
• iPhone subscribers pay Apple for janitor+ and Janitor for the wallet, separately
• App ratings: 4,037 at 4.49 on 26 September, up from 1,460 at 4.0 in August

Is Janitor AI still free, or is it paid now?

Both. The base platform is still free, janitor+ is $12.99 a month, and the Router is metered on top of janitor+.

Janitor's own subscription FAQ describes a free tier with unlimited chats and "a context limit of around 9k tokens", and janitor+ raises that about fivefold. Nothing has been taken away from free users by the Router launch; Router is simply unavailable to them. So there are now three ways to use Janitor, with three very different cost shapes: free with JLLM and a small context, $12.99 flat with JLLM+ and a bigger context, and $12.99 plus an open-ended per-token bill with the Router.

If you only ever use the first two, Janitor's pricing is simple. The Router is where it stops being simple, because the second number has no ceiling you can see before you start.

• Free tier: unlimited chats, context around 9k tokens, per Janitor
• janitor+: $12.99 a month, roughly 5x the context
• janitor+ with Router: $12.99 plus per-token usage from a wallet
• Free users can still run their own proxy; they cannot use Router

Who should pay for the Janitor Router, and who should not

Pay for it if you already subscribe to janitor+, you want a frontier model for specific long scenes, you have never managed to get a proxy working, and you are happy to watch a wallet balance. For that person the Router is a genuine improvement, and Janitor has priced the convenience honestly: the rate is shown before you chat, and the launch credits let you try it for nothing.

Do not pay for it if a working OpenRouter key already does the job, because the Router then costs you $12.99 a month for a picker you do not need. Do not pay for it if you chat mostly on your phone, because it is not there. And do not load a large balance you might not spend, because the credits are non-refundable and the public documentation will not tell you what happens to them when you cancel.

And if what you actually want is one companion who remembers you and texts you first, without choosing models or funding a wallet, you are shopping in a different aisle. That is what Tempted.ai is: plans at $9, $19 and $39 a month billed yearly ($12, $24 and $49 month to month), memory on every plan, voice notes from Flame, and nothing metered. Janitor is a very good platform for character roleplay, and at thousands of characters it does something we do not try to do. We are the simpler bill.

• Good fit: existing janitor+ subscriber, web user, no working proxy
• Poor fit: you already run your own OpenRouter key
• Poor fit: you chat mostly on mobile
• Never pre-load a large balance: credits are non-refundable
• Want one companion and one flat price: Tempted from $9 a month