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OpenRouter

OpenRouter is a unified API gateway that gives WednesdayAI access to hundreds of models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Mistral, Meta, and others — all from one API key.

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When to use it

  • Experiment with many models without managing separate keys
  • Unified billing across providers
  • Access to models not available in your region

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Authentication

Create a key at openrouter.ai/keys, then onboard, or set it on the gateway host: 
echo 'OPENROUTER_API_KEY=sk-or-v1-...' >> ~/.openclaw/.env

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Selecting a model

OpenRouter model references are prefixed with openrouter/ and keep the upstream provider/model path: 
{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      model: { primary: "openrouter/anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-5" },
    },
  },
}
ModelReference
Claude Sonnet 4.5openrouter/anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-5
Claude Opus 4.6openrouter/anthropic/claude-opus-4-6
Gemini 2.0 Flashopenrouter/google/gemini-2.0-flash-001
Llama 3.3 70Bopenrouter/meta-llama/llama-3.3-70b-instruct
DeepSeek R1openrouter/deepseek/deepseek-r1
When typing /model in chat with an OpenRouter reference, include the full openrouter/ prefix — the reference is parsed by splitting on the first /, so the provider prefix is required for IDs that themselves contain /.
Run openclaw models status to list models your key can access. WednesdayAI can also scan OpenRouter’s free-model catalog with openclaw models scan.

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Troubleshooting

The key is invalid. Re-run onboarding with a fresh key from openrouter.ai/keys.
Not all models are available on all tiers. Check openrouter.ai/models for your key’s access.
OpenRouter adds a routing hop. Use it for experimentation; connect directly for latency-sensitive production.