What is AnyRouter? A plain-English guide to AI model routing

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and the other AI providers each ship their own SDK, their own base URL, their own auth scheme, and their own error format. If your app uses models from more than one provider, you end up writing and maintaining a separate integration for each one.

An AI model router sits in the middle. You send one request and the router forwards it to the right provider, translating formats and handling failures so your code doesn't have to.

AnyRouter is an AI API gateway that exposes a single OpenAI-compatible endpoint (/v1/chat/completions) in front of models from many providers. You point your existing client at AnyRouter's base URL, pass a model id like anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-5 or google/gemini-2.5-pro, and the gateway routes the request.

It supports Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) — you can attach your own provider keys and route through them at no platform markup — as well as a shared-key pool option.

It also handles failover: if one upstream returns a 429, 401, or 5xx, the gateway tries the next available upstream automatically. Your client only ever sees the final successful response.

• Developers building apps that use multiple AI models
• Teams that want one billing point and one audit trail
• Students and researchers looking for free or low-cost model access
• CLI users who want to switch models without changing config files

Sign up at anyrouter.dev, create an API key, and make a request:

curl https://anyrouter.dev/api/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk-ar-v1-placeholder" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"model":"anyrouter/free","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello"}]}'

The anyrouter/free model tier is available at no cost and is a good first test. If you outgrow it, the Go plan is $2/mo with a $4 credit included.

Track requests, tokens, and costs per model at chmonitor.dev. It shows per-model breakdowns so you can see which models you're actually using and where your spend goes.