OpenRouter launches a rebuilt Auto Router and a new Auto Code router (November 6, 2026)

What changed

On November 6, 2026 OpenRouter released a rebuilt Auto Router and a new Auto Code router. Both pick a model and a reasoning effort for each request, using live prices, cache status, provider health and benchmark results.

• openrouter/auto: the general router. It favours a cost-efficient tier of models.
• openrouter/auto-code: tuned for coding agents and harnesses. It starts in a higher cost tier and treats each request as part of an agent session, so it avoids switching models without need.
• openrouter/auto-beta: the channel where Auto Router changes appear first.

There is no extra router fee. You pay the normal price of the model that serves the request. The response's model field shows which model answered. Existing openrouter/auto users need no changes.

Prerequisites

• An OpenRouter API key in OPENROUTER_API_KEY
• Python 3 with requests, or any HTTP client

Steps

1. Set model to openrouter/auto (or openrouter/auto-code for coding agents) in a normal request.
2. To steer it, add the auto-router plugin. cost_tier takes low, medium or high; allowed_models and excluded_models limit the pool. This is the docs' Python example (it needs import json and import requests):

response = requests.post(
  url="https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/responses",
  headers={
    "Authorization": "Bearer <OPENROUTER_API_KEY>",
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  data=json.dumps({
    "model": "openrouter/auto",
    "input": "Summarize this paragraph",
    "plugins": [
      {
        "id": "auto-router",
        "cost_tier": "high"
      }
    ]
  })
)