Migrate from OpenRouter to Railwail

TL;DR — Switch in Under 5 Minutes

• Both APIs are OpenAI-compatible — change baseURL and key
• Railwail mirrors all major models OpenRouter offers (GPT-4o, Claude, Gemini, Llama, Mistral, DeepSeek)
• Railwail is EU-hosted with EUR billing — OpenRouter is US-default with USD
• Railwail has direct provider contracts (vs OpenRouter's mixed credit-pool approach)
• Cleaner pricing — per-model line items, no per-request overhead beyond FX

Why Move Off OpenRouter?

OpenRouter is one of the original AI aggregators. It works well for personal projects and US-based teams. The gaps for EU production teams: USD billing without VAT receipts, US-default routing, opaque pricing on some models (markup is applied silently), and no EU-only routing guarantee. Railwail addresses each of these — same OpenAI-compatible surface, but with EU residency, EUR invoices, and transparent per-token pricing.

Step 1 — Get a Railwail API Key

Sign up at railwail.com and generate a key.

Step 2 — Change Base URL

TypeScript / JavaScript

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" }],
});

import OpenAI from "openai";

const client = new OpenAI({
  apiKey: process.env.RAILWAIL_API_KEY,
  baseURL: "https://api.railwail.com/v1",
});

const res = await client.chat.completions.create({
  model: "claude-sonnet-4-6",
  messages: [{ role: "user", content: "Hello" }],
});

Python

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    api_key=os.environ["RAILWAIL_API_KEY"],
    base_url="https://api.railwail.com/v1",
)

resp = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="claude-sonnet-4-6",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}],
)

cURL

curl https://api.railwail.com/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

Pricing Comparison (per 1M tokens, May 2026)

Both aggregators charge close to the upstream provider's list price. Railwail's EUR billing eliminates the 1.5-2% FX margin many EU customers pay on USD invoices via their bank.

Why Railwail Over OpenRouter

• EU hosting with Frankfurt-region inference for low EU latency
• EUR billing with VAT receipts — clean accounting for EU entities
• Direct provider contracts on Anthropic, OpenAI, Google (vs OpenRouter's mixed routing)
• No required HTTP-Referer or X-Title headers
• Transparent per-token pricing — no hidden markup on rare models
• 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 ~275. The major frontier models are mirrored on both. Long-tail community fine-tunes may only be on one or the other — check railwail.com/models?search=<model> first.

What about OpenRouter's auto-routing and fallback?

Railwail supports explicit fallback rules in the dashboard (e.g. 'route Claude → GPT-4o on 5xx'). Auto-routing across providers based on cost/latency is on the roadmap; for now 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 — use up your OpenRouter balance while ramping up Railwail traffic.

Are usage statistics exportable?

Yes. Railwail dashboard exports per-model, per-key usage as CSV or via the /v1/usage API.

What about prompt caching?

Anthropic prompt caching (cache_control) and OpenAI prompt caching are both forwarded transparently. You get the same discount upstream.

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, Llama 3.3).

Next Steps

• Sign up at railwail.com
• Generate an API key
• Update baseURL to https://api.railwail.com/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