Working Across Multiple Providers
Explore how to efficiently work across hundreds of AI models from multiple providers using OpenRouter. Understand model naming, programmatic discovery via API, reading model metadata, and designing provider-agnostic application code to enable flexible model selection and effective routing strategies.
In the last lesson, we learned how we could switch between two models by changing a single line of code. With access to over 400 models from more than 60 providers, the next skill is knowing how to navigate that marketplace to find the right tool for a specific job and how to write code that makes swapping models a configuration change rather than an engineering task.
This lesson focuses on discovery. We will learn how to explore the model ecosystem, use the API to find models based on their capabilities, and design application code that can adapt as the market evolves.
Understanding the model landscape
The key to navigating OpenRouter is its standardized naming convention. Every model is identified by a unique string that tells you both who made it and which version it is.
Model naming conventions
Model IDs follow a simple provider/model-name format. This makes it easy to identify the source of ...