Proxy OpenRouter Requests

OpenRouter provides a unified, OpenAI-compatible API that aggregates models from multiple providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, and more).

This guide shows how to integrate APISIX with OpenRouter using the ai-proxy plugin. With provider set to openrouter, you do not need to set a custom endpoint.

Prerequisite(s)

• Install Docker.
• Install cURL to send requests to the services for validation.
• Follow the Getting Started Tutorial to start a new APISIX instance in Docker or on Kubernetes.

Obtain an OpenRouter API Key

Create an account and API key by following the OpenRouter Quickstart. Optionally save the key to an environment variable:

export OPENROUTER_API_KEY=sk-or-v1-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  # replace with your API key

Create a Route to OpenRouter

Create a route with the ai-proxy plugin as such:

Admin API

curl "http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes" -X PUT -d '{
  "id": "openrouter-chat",
  "uri": "/anything",
  "plugins": {
    "ai-proxy": {
      "provider": "openrouter",
      "auth": {
        "header": {
          "Authorization": "Bearer '"$OPENROUTER_API_KEY"'"
        }
      },
      "options": {
        "model": "deepseek/deepseek-chat"
      }
    }
  }
}'

❶ Set the provider to openrouter.

❷ Attach the OpenRouter API key using the Authorization header.

❸ Set a model supported by OpenRouter, for example deepseek/deepseek-chat.

ADC

adc.yaml

services:
  - name: OpenRouter Service
    routes:
      - uris:
          - /anything
        name: openrouter-chat
        plugins:
          ai-proxy:
            provider: openrouter
            auth:
              header:
                Authorization: "Bearer sk-or-v1-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
            options:
              model: deepseek/deepseek-chat

❶ Set the provider to openrouter.

❷ Attach the OpenRouter API key using the Authorization header.

❸ Set a model supported by OpenRouter, for example deepseek/deepseek-chat.

Synchronize the configuration to APISIX:

adc sync -f adc.yaml

Ingress Controller

Create a Kubernetes manifest file to configure a route:

Gateway API

openrouter-route.yaml

apiVersion: apisix.apache.org/v1alpha1
kind: PluginConfig
metadata:
  namespace: ingress-apisix
  name: ai-proxy-plugin-config
spec:
  plugins:
    - name: ai-proxy
      config:
        provider: openrouter
        auth:
          header:
            Authorization: "Bearer sk-or-v1-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
        options:
          model: deepseek/deepseek-chat
---
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: HTTPRoute
metadata:
  namespace: ingress-apisix
  name: openrouter-chat
spec:
  parentRefs:
  - name: apisix
  rules:
  - matches: 
    - path:
        type: Exact
        value: /anything
    filters:
    - type: ExtensionRef
      extensionRef:
        group: apisix.apache.org
        kind: PluginConfig
        name: ai-proxy-plugin-config

APISIX CRD

openrouter-route.yaml

apiVersion: apisix.apache.org/v2
kind: ApisixRoute
metadata:
  namespace: ingress-apisix
  name: openrouter-route
spec:
  ingressClassName: apisix
  http:
    - name: openrouter-route
      match:
        paths:
          - /anything
      plugins:
      - name: ai-proxy
        enable: true
        config:
          provider: openrouter
          auth:
            header:
              Authorization: "Bearer sk-or-v1-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
          options:
            model: deepseek/deepseek-chat

❶ Set the provider to openrouter.

❷ Attach the OpenRouter API key using the Authorization header.

❸ Set a model supported by OpenRouter, for example deepseek/deepseek-chat.

Apply the configuration to your cluster:

kubectl apply -f openrouter-route.yaml

Verify

Send a request with the following prompts to the route:

curl "http://127.0.0.1:9080/anything" -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "messages": [
      {
        "role": "system",
        "content": "You are a computer scientist."
      },
      {
        "role": "user",
        "content": "Explain in one sentence what a Turing machine is."
      }
    ]
  }'

You should receive a response similar to the following:

{
  "id": "gen-1770023173-XYUZ4kUwUAWHwDMPLN20",
  "provider": "Novita",
  "model": "deepseek/deepseek-chat",
  ...
  "choices": [
    {
      "logprobs": null,
      "finish_reason": "stop",
      "native_finish_reason": "stop",
      "index": 0,
      "message": {
        "role": "assistant",
        "content": "A Turing machine is a theoretical computational model that manipulates symbols on an infinite tape according to a set of rules, simulating any algorithm's logic and serving as the foundation for modern computability theory.",
        "refusal": null,
        "reasoning": null
      }
    }
  ],
  ...
}

Next Steps

You have learned how to integrate APISIX with OpenRouter. See the OpenRouter Quickstart and Models pages for more details.

If you would like to stream responses, enable streaming in your request and use the proxy-buffering plugin to disable NGINX proxy_buffering to avoid server-sent events (SSE) being buffered.