This is a guide for y'all that want to use that AI chat feature in IDE's like Cursor and Windsurf without breaking the bank and having a limited amount of prompts from premium models that spit out the same outputs as free-models.
I will be using ai to grammatically clean up the steps below so you can read what I type out coherently
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Install Cursor IDE on your device.
- Do not pay for the subscription.
- Do not start the free trial — just use the free tier.
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Sign up at OpenRouter.ai.
- Do not top up your account unless you want to try premium models like OpenAI’s o1 or Claude Sonnet 3.7.
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Open Cursor and go to:
Cursor Settings > Models
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Scroll to the OpenAI API Key section.
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In a separate tab, go to OpenRouter.ai.
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Hover over the dropdown in the top-right and select Keys.
- Create a new API key:
- Name it anything you want.
- Leave the credit limit blank (we're not spending money).
- Copy the API key. {Store anywhere you want fam, or maybe practice them security habits}
- Back in Cursor:
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Paste your API key into the OpenAI API Key field.
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For the Base URL, use:
https://openrouter.ai/api/v1
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- Click verify — this should only take a few seconds. {if it doesn't work and u typed in your key, check your spelling! }
- On OpenRouter, go to the Models tab.
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On the sidebar, adjust the Prompt Pricing slider to
FREE. -
Choose any model you like. In this case for various reasons we're choosing Deepseek r1(free) cough, cough:
Type in and press on deepseek r1 free
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Copy the model code. [Below the Title DeepSeek: R1 (free)]
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Back in Cursor:
- Click Add Model.
- Paste the model code into the name field.
- Bonus feature Repeat to add as many free models as you want.
Models I use and reccommend
The Free ones hahahahaha... moving on!
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Create a folder called Code and in it a simple Python file (e.g.,
hello.py) in Cursor. [I'll assume you know how to create a .py file in a IDE] -
Click the Right-Side panel icon and then the AI chat icon (top-right of the Cursor IDE).
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Select the model in the prompt input box(e.g.,
deepseek/deepseek-r1:free). -
Ask:
How do I print "Hello World" in Python?It will take a second as R1 is a reasoning model
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Now lets break it, remove a quotation mark from the end of hello world.
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Ask your ai chhat,
why is my code not working? -
It should tell you about a syntax error due to an unclosed string literal you didn't close the quote
Thats it, now you can "VIBE-CODE" without having to swap back and forth between your IDE and Openai to code your tech startup Just kidding unless you did do that... anyway this should work fine and If you any better way of doing this please pull request if u wanna help make this more efficent and accuarate and stuff.