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Set up OpenRouter

Last validated:

Aperture by Tailscale is currently in alpha.

Configure an OpenRouter provider in Aperture so your team can access models from multiple LLM providers through a single API. OpenRouter aggregates models from providers like Google, Meta, and others, including open-source models.

Aperture routes requests based on the model name, not the LLM client. Any LLM client configured to use Aperture can access any provider your admin has set up. Refer to the provider compatibility reference for the full list of supported providers and API formats.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, you need:

Configure the provider

Add OpenRouter as a provider in your Aperture configuration:

{
  "providers": {
    "openrouter": {
      "baseurl": "https://openrouter.ai/api/",
      "apikey": "<your-openrouter-key>",
      "models": [
        "qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
        "google/gemini-2.5-pro-preview",
        "x-ai/grok-code-fast-1"
      ]
    }
  }
}

OpenRouter uses OpenAI-compatible defaults (bearer authorization, openai_chat), so no compatibility flags or authorization overrides are needed. OpenRouter does not support the Responses API (openai_responses), only the chat completions API. This makes OpenRouter useful if you want to access models from multiple providers without configuring each one separately in Aperture.

Model names on OpenRouter use a provider/model prefix format. Browse the OpenRouter model directory to find available model names. Refer to the provider compatibility reference for the full list of flags.

After configuring the provider:

  1. Grant model access to the users or groups that need these models.
  2. Set up LLM clients to connect coding tools through Aperture.

Verify the provider

The best way to verify a connection to a specific model is to send a test request through the Models tab of the Aperture dashboard.

  1. Open the Aperture dashboard and select the Models tab.
  2. Find the model you want to test in the list of configured models. If the model is not listed, check your provider configuration and ensure the model name is correct.
  3. Select the Play icon to the left of the model name to send a test request. If the request succeeds, the icon changes to a green check mark. If it fails, the icon changes to a red "X".

This sends a request from your web browser to the tailnet to verify that Aperture can successfully route requests to the model through the configured provider and that your user account has the necessary permissions to access the model.