OrcaRouter is an OpenAI-compatible AI gateway that grades every prompt and routes it to the optimal model across 200+ models, with zero token markup and built-in observability, guardrails, and failover.
What is OrcaRouter?
OrcaRouter is an intelligent AI gateway that takes any OpenAI-compatible API request (chat completions, streaming, tools, embeddings, audio) and routes it to the best-fit model — frontier or open-source — based on prompt grade, cost, and real-time performance. You swap one line: set base_url to https://api.orcarouter.ai/v1. It runs as a cloud service built by Continuum-AI-Corp, with per-request logs, automatic failover (under 50ms), and enforcement of guardrails before billing. No token markup — you pay each provider their published rate.
Key Features
- Adaptive routing with online learning — every prompt is embedded and scored; the router learns from real traffic and achieved 75.5% accuracy on the RouterArena leaderboard (June 2026), ahead of GPT-5 and Azure.
- Zero token markup — you pay only the provider’s direct price (e.g. $5.00/M input for Claude Opus 4.8). OrcaRouter adds $0 per token, ever.
- Real-time observability — every request logs the grade, chosen model, provider, latency, cost, and a copy-as-cURL replay. No black boxes.
- Auto-failover — when a provider returns a 503 or rate-limit, the request is retried on a healthy model before the response starts (mid-stream failover in <50ms).
- Guardrails and Agent Firewall — PII shield and content policies block malicious requests before billing, returning a clean 400. Tool calls (MCP) are graded ALLOW / REVIEW / BLOCK with anomaly detection against hour-of-week baselines.
- Prompt versioning and caching — version prompts behind named labels with A/B splits and instant rollback. Repeated prompt tokens are billed at provider cache rates (5-minute / 1-hour windows), cutting cost up to 90%.
- Per-workspace routing modes — choose Cheapest, Balanced, Quality, or Adaptive (learns from your traffic). Override with custom rules in YAML+CEL.
Who is it for?
- AI engineers building production apps — route across GPT-5, Claude, Gemini, and 200+ models without changing your SDK; one endpoint handles streaming, tools, structured outputs, vision, and audio.
- Teams optimizing LLM spend — automatically route simple queries to cheap models and complex tasks to frontier models, cutting cost up to 40% while maintaining quality.
- Agent developers needing security — enforce default-deny on all tool calls and outbound network destinations; protect against prompt injection, jailbreaks, and data exfiltration without code changes.
- Enterprises requiring compliance — OrcaRouter is SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 audited; full audit trail and role-based budgets for team governance.
What can you do with OrcaRouter?
- Multi-model integration: Access all major providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Grok, Qwen, etc.) through one OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Swap
base_url and keep your existing SDK, framework, and editor.
- Cost optimization: Set each workspace to "Balanced" mode — the cheapest model that clears your quality bar. The router grades every prompt and picks accordingly, with zero token markup.
- Agent security: The built-in Agent Firewall allows, reviews, or blocks MCP tool calls (e.g.,
read_file → ALLOW, shell.exec → BLOCK) and flags anomalous rate/cost spikes against learned baselines.
- Rapid deployment: Go live in 60 seconds — just change your
base_url to https://api.orcarouter.ai/v1 and add your OrcaRouter API key. No credit card required for the free Hacker plan.
