OpenRouter's January 2025 Auto Router update expanded automatic model selection to 19 models and made the model that handled a request clearer in its chat interface. The short announcement described quality as the routing objective and said that information is also available through the API, giving users a way to delegate model selection.
That announcement describes an earlier version. The later router revision, announced in August 2026, selects candidates using spending patterns for similar tasks over the preceding seven days and a user-selected cost tier. The original 19-model figure should be read as release history.
