What is Claude Code Router?

Claude Code Router is a powerful routing layer designed for developers who want to take full control of their AI-powered coding workflow. It solves the challenge of being tied to a single model by allowing you to intelligently route your Claude Code requests across a wide range of AI providers. This gives you the ultimate flexibility to optimize for performance, cost, and specific task requirements.

Key Features

🧠 Intelligent, Rule-Based Model Routing Define rules to automatically send tasks to the most suitable model. For example, you can configure a lightweight local model via Ollama for simple background tasks, while routing complex think commands to a powerful reasoning model like DeepSeek or Gemini Pro. This ensures you're always using the right tool for the job without manual intervention.
🌐 Broad Multi-Provider Support Break free from vendor lock-in. Claude Code Router natively supports a diverse ecosystem of model providers, including OpenRouter, DeepSeek, Ollama, Gemini, and more. You can seamlessly integrate and switch between them by simply updating a single configuration file, giving you access to the latest and best models on the market.
⚡ Dynamic On-the-Fly Switching Adapt to new challenges in real-time directly within the Claude Code interface. Using the simple /model command (e.g., /model openrouter,claude-3.5-sonnet), you can instantly switch to a different provider and model for your next request. This gives you immediate, granular control over your coding assistant's capabilities.
🔌 Seamless API Transformation & Extensibility The router includes a robust system of "transformers" that automatically adapt API requests and responses to be compatible with each provider's unique format. This is the mechanism that makes multi-provider support seamless. For advanced users, you can even build your own custom transformers to extend functionality and integrate with any API.
🤖 Integrated for GitHub Actions Automate sophisticated coding tasks directly within your CI/CD pipeline. By integrating Claude Code Router into your GitHub Actions workflow, you can offload tasks, automate code reviews, or generate documentation using the exact model you specify, creating powerful and cost-effective automations.

How Claude Code Router Solves Your Problems:

For Cost-Conscious Development: You run frequent, simple code generations. Instead of paying premium API prices for every task, you configure the router to use a free, local Ollama model as the default, only calling a paid, high-performance model like Claude 3.5 Sonnet for complex think tasks. This drastically reduces your API costs.
For Task-Specific Optimization: You're working on a large-scale refactoring project and need to analyze a file with over 100,000 tokens of code. You use the /model command to switch to a provider with a massive context window for just that task, ensuring a complete and accurate analysis without changing your primary setup.
For Automated Team Workflows: You want to ensure every pull request is reviewed by an AI for potential issues. You set up a GitHub Action that triggers Claude Code Router, which routes the request to a fast and efficient model like DeepSeek to analyze the code and post comments, streamlining your review process.

Conclusion:

Claude Code Router transforms your Claude Code instance from a single-purpose tool into a flexible, multi-model command center. It empowers you to build a more efficient, cost-effective, and powerful AI-assisted development workflow tailored precisely to your needs. If you're ready to move beyond the limitations of a single model and take full control, this is the tool for you.

Explore how you can start building a smarter coding workflow today!

More information on Claude Code Router

Launched

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Free

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Claude Code Router was manually vetted by our editorial team and was first featured on 2025-07-20.