OpenRouter SDK
The OpenRouter SDK is a Python toolkit designed to help you build AI-powered features and solutions. Giving you easy access to 400+ models across providers in an easy and type-safe way.
The OpenRouter Python SDK is stable as of v1.0.
To learn more about how to use the OpenRouter SDK, check out our API Reference and Documentation.
SDK Installation
The SDK can be installed with uv, pip, or poetry package managers.
uv
uv is a fast Python package installer and resolver, designed as a drop-in replacement for pip and pip-tools. It's recommended for its speed and modern Python tooling capabilities.
uv add openrouter
PIP
PIP is the default package installer for Python, enabling easy installation and management of packages from PyPI via the command line.
pip install openrouter
Poetry
Poetry is a modern tool that simplifies dependency management and package publishing by using a single pyproject.toml file to handle project metadata and dependencies.
poetry add openrouter
Shell and script usage with uv
You can use this SDK in a Python shell with uv and the uvx command that comes with it like so:
uvx --from openrouter python
It's also possible to write a standalone Python script without needing to set up a whole project like so:
#!/usr/bin/env -S uv run --script
# /// script
# requires-python = ">=3.10"
# dependencies = [
# "openrouter",
# ]
# ///
from openrouter import OpenRouter
sdk = OpenRouter(
# SDK arguments
)
# Rest of script here...
Once that is saved to a file, you can run it with uv run script.py where
script.py can be replaced with the actual file name.
Requirements
This SDK requires Python 3.10 or higher. For Python version support policy, see the SDK Installation section above.
IDE Support
PyCharm
Generally, the SDK will work well with most IDEs out of the box. However, when using PyCharm, you can enjoy much better integration with Pydantic by installing an additional plugin.
SDK Usage
# Synchronous Example
from openrouter import OpenRouter
import os
with OpenRouter(
api_key=os.getenv("OPENROUTER_API_KEY", ""),
) as open_router:
res = open_router.chat.send(messages=[
{
"role": "user",
"content": "Hello, how are you?",
},
], model="anthropic/claude-4.5-sonnet", provider={
"zdr": True,
"sort": "price",
}, stream=True)
for event in event_stream:
# handle event
print(event, flush=True)
Web Search
The SDK includes native types for OpenRouter web search. For Chat Completions, pass the OpenRouter server tool in tools:
from openrouter import OpenRouter, components
import os
with OpenRouter(api_key=os.getenv("OPENROUTER_API_KEY", "")) as open_router:
res = open_router.chat.send(
model="openai/gpt-4o",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "What changed in AI today?"}],
tools=[
components.OpenRouterWebSearchServerTool(
type="openrouter:web_search",
parameters=components.WebSearchConfig(
max_results=5,
search_context_size="medium",
),
)
],
)
For the Responses API, use the Responses server-tool type:
from openrouter import OpenRouter, components
import os
with OpenRouter(api_key=os.getenv("OPENROUTER_API_KEY", "")) as open_router:
res = open_router.responses.send(
model="openai/gpt-4o",
input="What changed in AI today?",
tools=[
components.WebSearchServerToolOpenRouter(
type="openrouter:web_search",
parameters=components.WebSearchServerToolConfig(
max_results=5,
search_context_size="medium",
),
)
],
stream=False,
)
The SDK also supports OpenRouter's web-search plugin via components.WebSearchPlugin(id="web", ...) for request shapes that accept plugins.
The same SDK client can also be used to make asynchronous requests by importing asyncio.
# Asynchronous Example
import asyncio
from openrouter import OpenRouter
import os
async def main():
async with OpenRouter(
api_key=os.getenv("OPENROUTER_API_KEY", ""),
) as open_router:
res = await open_router.chat.send_async(messages=[
{
"role": "user",
"content": "Hello, how are you?",
},
], model="anthropic/claude-4.5-sonnet", provider={
"zdr": True,
"sort": "price",
}, stream=True)
async for event in event_stream:
# handle event
print(event, flush=True)
asyncio.run(main())
Pagination
Some of the endpoints in this SDK support pagination. To use pagination, you make your SDK calls as usual, but the
returned response object will have a Next method that can be called to pull down the next group of results. If the
return value of Next is None, then there are no more pages to be fetched.
Here's an example of one such pagination call:
from openrouter import OpenRouter
import os
with OpenRouter(
http_referer="<value>",
x_open_router_title="<value>",
x_open_router_categories="<value>",
api_key=os.getenv("OPENROUTER_API_KEY", ""),
) as open_router:
res = open_router.byok.list(offset=0, limit=50)
while res is not None:
# Handle items
res = res.next()
File uploads
Certain SDK methods accept file objects as part of a request body or multi-part request. It is possible and typically recommended to upload files as a stream rather than reading the entire contents into memory. This avoids excessive memory consumption and potentially crashing with out-of-memory errors when working with very large files. The following example demonstrates how to attach a file stream to a request.
from openrouter import OpenRouter
import os
with OpenRouter(
http_referer="<value>",
x_open_router_title="<value>",
x_open_router_categories="<value>",
api_key=os.getenv("OPENROUTER_API_KEY", ""),
) as open_router:
res = open_router.stt.create_transcription_multipart(file={
"file_name": "example.file",
"content": open("example.file", "rb"),
}, model="openai/whisper-large-v3", language="en")
# Handle response
print(res)
Resource Management
The OpenRouter class implements the context manager protocol and registers a finalizer function to close the underlying sync and async HTTPX clients it uses under the hood. This will close HTTP connections, release memory and free up other resources held by the SDK. In short-lived Python programs and notebooks that make a few SDK method calls, resource management may not be a concern. However, in longer-lived programs, it is beneficial to create a single SDK instance via a context manager and reuse it across the application.
from openrouter import OpenRouter
import os
def main():
with OpenRouter(
http_referer="<value>",
x_open_router_title="<value>",
x_open_router_categories="<value>",
api_key=os.getenv("OPENROUTER_API_KEY", ""),
) as open_router:
# Rest of application here...
# Or when using async:
async def amain():
async with OpenRouter(
http_referer="<value>",
x_open_router_title="<value>",
x_open_router_categories="<value>",
api_key=os.getenv("OPENROUTER_API_KEY", ""),
) as open_router:
# Rest of application here...
Debugging
You can setup your SDK to emit debug logs for SDK requests and responses.
You can pass your own logger class directly into your SDK.
from openrouter import OpenRouter
import logging
logging.basicConfig(level=logging.DEBUG)
s = OpenRouter(debug_logger=logging.getLogger("openrouter"))
You can also enable a default debug logger by setting an environment variable OPENROUTER_DEBUG to true.
Development
Running Tests
To run the test suite, you'll need to set up your environment with an OpenRouter API key.
Local Development
-
Copy the example environment file:
cp .env.example .env
-
Edit
.envand add your OpenRouter API key:OPENROUTER_API_KEY=your_api_key_here
-
Run the tests:
pytest
Release files for openrouter 1.1.157
For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.
Source distribution (sdist)
| File | Size | Uploaded | |
|---|---|---|---|
| openrouter-1.1.157.tar.gz | 495.8 kB | Details |
Built distribution (wheel)
| File | Interpreter | ABI | Platform | Reset |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| openrouter-1.1.157-py3-none-any.whl | Python 3 | none | any | Details |
Total release size: 1.6 MB
Release files / openrouter-1.1.157.tar.gz
| Download URL | openrouter-1.1.157.tar.gz |
|---|---|
| Size | 495.8 kB |
| Tags | Source |
|
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums |
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|
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No |
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|
Release files / openrouter-1.1.157-py3-none-any.whl
| Download URL | openrouter-1.1.157-py3-none-any.whl |
|---|---|
| Size | 1.1 MB |
| Tags | Python 3 |
|
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums |
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Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing? |
No |
| Uploaded via |
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|
