IMAGEopenrouter

Auto Router (Beta)

Auto Router (Beta) is a task-aware router from OpenRouter. It classifies each request, then routes it the [most popular model](/rankings#task-spend) for that task based on aggregate spend, filtered by your...

Anyone in the Project can @-mention Auto Router (Beta) with the team's shared context - pooled credits, one chat, one memory.

All models

Starter is free forever - 1 Project, 100 credits/month, 1 MCP. No card.

Verdict

Auto Router is OpenRouter's experimental request dispatcher that picks the best available model for each prompt based on real-time performance and availability. It targets cost-conscious teams who want decent results without model selection overhead. The trade-off is unpredictability — you sacrifice control over which model runs your request, making debugging harder and output quality variable. Reach for this when you're prototyping or running low-stakes batch jobs where consistency matters less than average cost per token.

Best for

Prototyping with minimal model research
Cost-sensitive batch processing tasks
Exploratory data analysis workflows
Low-stakes content generation at scale

Strengths

Auto Router eliminates model selection paralysis by routing requests to whichever backend offers the best speed-cost-availability mix at query time. The 2M token context window suggests it can handle long documents when routed to appropriate models. Multi-modal support (text, image, audio, video, file) means you can throw varied input types at it without pre-filtering. For teams running thousands of requests where individual output variance is acceptable, this reduces both decision fatigue and average spend.

Trade-offs

You lose reproducibility — the same prompt may hit different models on successive runs, making A/B testing or debugging nearly impossible. Pricing is opaque (listed as unknown), so cost forecasting requires post-hoc analysis. Without public benchmarks, you're flying blind on capability floors; a critical prompt might land on a weaker model during peak load. Teams needing consistent voice, format adherence, or audit trails will find this router frustrating. The beta label signals expect breaking changes and limited support.

Specifications

Provider: openrouter
Category: image
Context length: 2,000,000 tokens
Max output: —
Modalities: text, image, audio, file, video
License: proprietary
Released: 2026-07-17

Pricing

Input: —
Output: —
Model ID: openrouter/auto-beta

Per-token prices show what the model costs upstream. On Switchy your team draws from one shared org credit pool - one plan, one balance for everyone.

Providers

Provider-level routing data is not available yet for this model.

Performance

Performance snapshots are collected daily. Check back after the next ingestion run.

Benchmarks

Public benchmark scores are not available yet for this model. Check back after the next ingestion run.

Works well with

Top MCPs

Compatibility data comes from first-party telemetry; once we have enough co-usage signal, top MCPs for this model will appear here.

How Switchy teams use it

Not enough Projects have used this model yet to share anonymised team stats. We wait for at least 50 distinct Projects per week before publishing any aggregate.

Starter prompts

Summarize Research PDFs

Read this PDF and provide a 200-word summary covering the research question, methodology, and main findings. Focus on actionable insights.

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Classify Support Tickets

Classify this support ticket into one of these categories: billing, technical, feature request, or other. Provide the category name and a one-sentence justification.

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Generate Product Descriptions

Write a 50-word product description for this item emphasizing benefits over features. Use an enthusiastic but professional tone.

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Extract Data from Screenshots

Extract all visible text, numbers, and labels from this screenshot into a JSON object. Use descriptive keys for each field you identify.

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Brainstorm Campaign Ideas

Suggest five marketing campaign ideas for this product targeting small business owners. For each idea, include a headline and two-sentence pitch.

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Compare with

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