OpenRouter launches next-generation Auto Router and Auto Code for coding agents

OpenRouter launched its next-generation Auto Router (openrouter/auto) alongside a dedicated coding router, Auto Code (openrouter/auto-code), on 6 November 2026. Processing more than 2.5T tokens per month, the updated routing engine evaluates each incoming prompt to select both the target model and the reasoning effort level from the pool permitted by the caller’s zero data retention (ZDR), provider, and bring-your-own-key policies.

Auto Code is tuned specifically for multi-turn software engineering and agentic tool use, achieving 74.3% on Deep SWE at $1.98 per task and cutting cost per task by roughly 74% compared with single frontier model calls at comparable accuracy. Both routers operate with a p90 routing decision latency of 0.65 seconds and expose per-request routing rationale and candidate model selection shares in the OpenRouter chat interface.