OrcaRouter

AI model router — analyzes prompt difficulty, sends hard tasks to frontier models and routine work to cheaper open-source models.

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orcarouter.ai
Verified API available Free tier
Quick facts
What is it AI model router — analyzes prompt difficulty, sends hard tasks to frontier models and routine work to cheaper open-source models.
Pricing Freemium — from $29/mo
Free tier Yes
Platform API
API Yes
Best for Reducing LLM API costs for a production application, Simplifying integration with multiple AI model providers
Domain registered 2026

Data updated Aug. 1, 2026

What does OrcaRouter do?

OrcaRouter is an intelligent API gateway that sits between your application and multiple large language model providers. Its primary job is to analyze each prompt you send, determine its complexity, and then route it to the most cost-effective model that can still deliver high-quality answers. For difficult reasoning tasks, it might send your request to a top-tier 'frontier' model like GPT-5.5 or Claude Opus. For simpler, more routine work, it can automatically use a capable but much cheaper open-source model. The goal is to maintain the quality of your application's outputs while significantly reducing your monthly API bill.

What makes OrcaRouter stand out is its transparency and simplicity. It adds no markup to the token costs you pay to providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google. You see the provider's direct rate for every request. Integration requires just one line of code change in most existing OpenAI SDK setups—you simply point your client to OrcaRouter's endpoint. The platform handles automatic failover if a provider has issues, and it gives you a complete dashboard to audit every routing decision, showing the prompt's difficulty grade, the chosen model, and the exact cost.

This tool is built for developers and teams who are running AI features in production and want to optimize costs without sacrificing reliability or adding complexity. It's ideal for startups watching their burn rate, larger companies scaling their AI usage, or any team tired of manually juggling multiple API keys and deciding which model to use for each task. By automating the trade-off between cost and capability, OrcaRouter lets developers focus on building their product rather than managing infrastructure.

#ai api gateway#ai-cost-optimization#claude proxy#gemini router#llm failover#llm router#multi-model api#openai proxy

Key features

What makes it stand out
01
Quality-graded routing that chooses the best model for each prompt
02
Zero token markup — you pay the provider's published rates directly
03
Access to 200+ models through a single OpenAI-compatible endpoint
04
Automatic failover between providers if one goes down
05
Full audit trail showing the grade, model, and provider for every request

Who is OrcaRouter for?

Who benefits most from this tool
Reducing LLM API costs for a production application
Simplifying integration with multiple AI model providers
Ensuring application reliability with automatic provider failover

Pricing

Free tier available — start without a credit card

Hacker

Free
  • 3 API keys
  • All 200+ models
  • Auto failover
  • Basic dashboard

Team

$29.0/month
  • Unlimited API keys
  • Team & budget controls
  • Per-request breakdown
  • Webhook + Slack alerts
  • Priority support

Enterprise

Custom
  • Private deployment option
  • Custom routing rules
  • 99.99% uptime SLA
  • Dedicated support
  • Audit logs & compliance

Trust & presence

Domain Domain registered 2026

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