OpenRouter
Bring your OpenRouter key into BitRouter — one aggregator key, hundreds of models, behind the registry.
OpenRouter is an OpenAI-compatible aggregator that fronts hundreds of models behind one key. BitRouter has a built-in openrouter provider, so bringing your key in is a single block in bitrouter.yaml — and from there OpenRouter's catalog joins the rest of your registry, with selection and fallback on top.
Migrating off OpenRouter entirely? If you want to replace OpenRouter rather than route through it, see Migrate from OpenRouter — it's a base-URL-and-key swap.
Prerequisites
- BitRouter installed, with a
bitrouter.yaml(scaffold one withbitrouter init). - An OpenRouter API key from openrouter.ai/keys, exported as
OPENROUTER_API_KEY.
Add OpenRouter to BitRouter
The openrouter provider ships with the right api_base and Bearer auth built in — you only supply the key and the models you want:
# bitrouter.yaml
providers:
openrouter:
api_key: ${OPENROUTER_API_KEY} # resolved from the environment at load
models:
- id: openai/gpt-4o
- id: anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6
- id: google/gemini-2.5-proEach models id is an OpenRouter model id. The base URL (https://openrouter.ai/api/v1) and chat_completions protocol are the provider's defaults, so you don't need to set them.
Attribution headers. OpenRouter's optional HTTP-Referer / X-Title leaderboard headers are not injected. If you want them, add them as per-provider header overrides in bitrouter.yaml.
Route to it
bitrouter route openrouter:openai/gpt-4oThen start BitRouter and send a request. Use the provider-qualified id openrouter:openai/gpt-4o to pin the request to OpenRouter, or the bare model name to let BitRouter cascade across sources.
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