Install BitRouter and wire it into your agent in under a minute — via Agent Skills or the CLI/TUI, self-hosted with your own keys or attached to BitRouter Cloud.

This page gets BitRouter routing for your agent in under a minute, then covers every way to configure it. There are two deployment modes, and two ways to onboard either one.

BitRouter Cloud (default). Hosted endpoint at api.bitrouter.ai. No upstream keys to manage; agent-native x402/MPP pay-per-use, or BYOK on top.
Local proxy. A single binary on your machine, BYOK with your own provider keys. Zero infrastructure dependencies.

Both modes run the same open-source core (Apache 2.0) — the routing engine is identical, so you can start in one mode and switch later without touching your harness. Not sure which to pick? See Self-host or Cloud? in the FAQ.

Install the binary

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/bitrouter/bitrouter/releases/latest/download/bitrouter-installer.sh | sh

brew install bitrouter/tap/bitrouter

npm install -g bitrouter

cargo install bitrouter

Onboard via Agent Skills

For agent runtimes that support skills (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Copilot, etc.). Install once:

npx skills add bitrouter/bitrouter

Then ask your agent: "Set up BitRouter for me." — the agent runs the wizard, picks Cloud by default, and verifies the connection autonomously.

Onboard via the CLI / TUI

For terminal-first setup, launch the wizard:

bitrouter

The wizard walks three steps — credentials (sign in to BitRouter Cloud by default, log in to a provider, or paste a BYOK key), harness (Claude Code or Codex), and finish (launch the agent, start the proxy at http://127.0.0.1:4356, or exit). Re-run it any time with bitrouter init; add --yes to drive it non-interactively (it emits a JSON result envelope and never blocks).

Run self-hosted

Set your provider keys in the environment and start the proxy:

export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...    # ANTHROPIC_API_KEY / GEMINI_API_KEY also work
bitrouter start
# Proxy running at http://127.0.0.1:4356

BitRouter auto-detects any key set in the environment — no config file needed. Any provider whose key is present is immediately available. See BYOK for the full list of recognized variables, or local & private models to point BitRouter at Ollama, vLLM, or LM Studio for free.

For advanced routing rules, guardrails, or multi-account failover, scaffold a config file:

bitrouter init          # writes ./bitrouter.yaml (override with `-c <path>`)
bitrouter start

Use BitRouter Cloud

Sign in to a BitRouter Cloud account from the terminal — one account covers every model the hosted network offers, with no upstream provider keys required:

bitrouter cloud login   # RFC 8628 device flow against api.bitrouter.ai
bitrouter start         # the `bitrouter` provider auto-enables once signed in

You can also point an agent straight at the hosted endpoint without running a local binary. Either way the core is the same — a Cloud account is an account and network, not a separate deployment. See the Supported Models catalog for pricing.

Attach Cloud to a self-hosted binary

Cloud is not a different binary — it's an account you attach:

bitrouter cloud login
# Opens a browser to sign in and pick a workspace.
# Your local binary now routes Cloud-managed models alongside your BYOK keys.

You can add or remove the Cloud account at any time. The binary's self-hosted capabilities are unaffected either way.

Point your agent at the proxy

However you start it, BitRouter is a drop-in proxy. Point your agent runtime at the proxy base URL — http://127.0.0.1:4356 when self-hosting — and every model call routes through BitRouter with no harness changes.

Verify with a request:

curl http://127.0.0.1:4356/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "openai/gpt-4o",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}]
  }'

Point any OpenAI-compatible runtime at http://127.0.0.1:4356/v1 to route through BitRouter.

Configuration