TL;DR โ Switch in Under 5 Minutes
- Both APIs are OpenAI-compatible โ change baseURL and key
- Railwail has direct provider contracts (vs OpenRouter's mixed credit-pool approach)
Anthropic's balanced mid-tier model from February 2026. Best price/performance for production workloads: 5x cheaper than Opus, near-flagship quality.
Models in this article
Why Move Off OpenRouter?
OpenRouter is one of the original AI aggregators. It works well for personal projects and US-based teams.
Step 1 โ Get a Railwail API Key
Sign up at railwail.com and generate a key.
Step 2 โ Change Base URL
Before (OpenRouter):
import OpenAI from "openai";
const or = new OpenAI({
apiKey: process.env.OPENROUTER_API_KEY,
baseURL: "https://openrouter.ai/api/v1",
defaultHeaders: {
"HTTP-Referer": "https://your-app.com",
"X-Title": "My App",
},
});
const res = await or.chat.completions.create({
model: "anthropic/claude-3.5-sonnet",
messages: [{ role: "user", content: "Hello" }],
});After (Railwail):
import OpenAI from "openai";
const client = new OpenAI({
apiKey: process.env.RAILWAIL_API_KEY,
baseURL: "https://railwail.com/api/v1",
});
const res = await client.chat.completions.create({
model: "claude-sonnet-4-6",
messages: [{ role: "user", content: "Hello" }],
});The OpenRouter-specific HTTP-Referer and X-Title headers are not needed.
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(
api_key=os.environ["RAILWAIL_API_KEY"],
base_url="https://railwail.com/api/v1",
)
resp = client.chat.completions.create(
model="claude-sonnet-4-6",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}],
)curl https://railwail.com/api/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $RAILWAIL_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"model": "claude-sonnet-4-6",
"messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}]
}'API Endpoint Mapping
Model Mapping
Why Railwail Over OpenRouter
- Direct provider contracts on Anthropic, OpenAI, Google (vs OpenRouter's mixed routing)
- No required HTTP-Referer or X-Title headers
- Built-in playground for model A/B testing in browser
- Spend caps, per-key rate limits, audit logs
FAQ
Is the model catalog the same?
OpenRouter has ~250 models, Railwail has 200+. The major frontier models are mirrored on both. Long-tail community fine-tunes may only be on one or the other โ check railwail.com/models?search=<model> first.
What about OpenRouter's auto-routing and fallback?
Railwail does not route or fall back automatically; you pick the model per call.
Can I keep my OpenRouter credits?
OpenRouter credits are non-transferable. Run both providers in parallel during the migration โ use up your OpenRouter balance while ramping up Railwail traffic.
Are usage statistics exportable?
Yes. Railwail dashboard exports per-model usage as CSV.
Does it support structured output (json_schema)?
Yes. response_format with json_schema works for any model that supports it upstream (GPT-4o, Claude, Gemini).
Next Steps
- Sign up at railwail.com
- Generate an API key
- Update baseURL to https://railwail.com/api/v1
- Translate slugs (drop the provider/ prefix)
- Read the reference at railwail.com/docs
- Browse models at railwail.com/models
- Compare pricing at railwail.com/pricing
- View providers at railwail.com/providers
Models in this article
Live prices from Railwail's current rules, October 7, 2026.
- Claude Sonnet 4.6Anthropic$3.60 / 1M input tokens$18.00/1M out1K in + 500 out tokens: โ $0.0126Try
- GPT-4oOpenAI$3.00 / 1M input tokens$12.00/1M out1K in + 500 out tokens: โ $0.0090Try
- GPT-4o MiniOpenAI$0.18 / 1M input tokens$0.72/1M out1K in + 500 out tokens: โ $0.00060Try
- Gemini 2.5 ProGoogle DeepMind$1.50 / 1M input tokens$12.00/1M out1K in + 500 out tokens: โ $0.0075Try
- Claude Haiku 4.5Anthropic$1.20 / 1M input tokens$6.00/1M out1K in + 500 out tokens: โ $0.0042Try
- DeepSeek V4 FlashDeepSeek$0.36 / 1M input tokens$1.44/1M out1K in + 500 out tokens: โ $0.0011Try
โ billed by actual tokens or GPU time
Next step
Try Claude Sonnet 4.6 on Railwail
Sign in with Google for 10 free credits (usable 24 hours after sign-up, runs up to 2 credits), or top up from $5.00. Unused balance does not expire.