OpenRouter launches new Auto and Auto Code routers with up to 4x performance gains

OpenRouter released a rebuilt Auto Router and a new Auto Code router, achieving up to 4x performance improvement over the previous version and reducing p90 routing latency from 1.96s to 0.65s.
Auto Code is specialized for coding harnesses, scoring in line with Claude Opus 5.5 across five benchmarks while costing 74% less per task.
The routing engine now evaluates eleven factors per request, including task type, difficulty, and speed requirements, combined with live pricing, provider health, and cache status.
In beta testing, the new system reduced invalid tool calls by 4x and cut agentic response cutoffs in half compared to the previous router.

Routing Mechanics

Model selection considers guardrails, zero data retention requirements, provider restrictions, and BYOK keys to define the available model pool.
The router favors staying on the same model to preserve input token cache benefits, switching only when the performance gain outweighs the cache rebuild cost.
Live routing mix data is visible on model pages, showing which models are selected most often by session type and difficulty level.

Users can access the new routers by setting the model to openrouter/auto or openrouter/auto-code in API requests or the chatroom.
No configuration changes are required for existing users, as the openrouter/auto slug and previous plugin settings remain compatible.
A openrouter/auto-beta channel is available for testing upcoming routing changes before they graduate to the stable release.