๐Ÿ“‰Cost Optimization

How to Configure OpenRouter Model Routing

Intermediate30-60 minutesUpdated 2025-01-18

OpenRouter acts as a unified gateway to multiple LLM providers and models, enabling intelligent routing based on task complexity. By configuring OpenRouter with OpenClaw, you can automatically send simple tasks to Claude Haiku, complex reasoning to Claude Opus, and everything else to Sonnet โ€” cutting costs by 50-70% while maintaining quality.

Why This Is Hard to Do Yourself

These are the common pitfalls that trip people up.

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Manual model selection

Without routing, you manually pick a model for each task or default to one expensive option

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Task complexity detection

How do you know which model to use for each request? Pattern matching is brittle and hard to maintain

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Fallback complexity

If your primary model is rate-limited or down, requests fail. Setting up fallbacks manually is tedious

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Hidden cost drains

Simple formatting and summarization tasks sent to Opus waste 50x the tokens they should

Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1

Sign up for OpenRouter

Create an account and get your API key.

Step 2

Configure OpenRouter in OpenClaw

Set up the OpenRouter provider.

Step 3

Define routing rules

Set up pattern-based model routing.

Warning: Routing patterns are regex-based and evaluated in order. Put more specific patterns first to avoid them being caught by broader ones.

Step 4

Set up fallback models

Handle rate limits and outages gracefully.

Step 5

Test routing with sample prompts

Verify models are routing correctly.

Step 6

Monitor routing decisions and costs

Track which models handle which requests.

Get Expert Routing Configuration

Routing rules that are too aggressive hurt quality. Rules that are too conservative waste money. Our experts analyze your actual usage patterns and configure optimal routing that balances cost and performance.

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Frequently Asked Questions