OpenRouter Model Availability

Overview

OpenRouter's

/api/v1/models

Query Model Status

# Check if specific models exist and their status
curl -s https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/models | jq '[.data[] | select(
  .id == "anthropic/claude-3.5-sonnet" or
  .id == "openai/gpt-4o" or
  .id == "openai/gpt-4o-mini"
) | {
  id,
  context_length,
  prompt_per_M: ((.pricing.prompt | tonumber) * 1000000),
  completion_per_M: ((.pricing.completion | tonumber) * 1000000)
}]'

# List all available models (just IDs)
curl -s https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/models | jq '[.data[].id] | sort'

# Count models by provider
curl -s https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/models | jq '[.data[].id | split("/")[0]] | group_by(.) | map({provider: .[0], count: length}) | sort_by(-.count)'

Health Check Service

import os, time, logging
from datetime import datetime, timezone
from dataclasses import dataclass
import requests
from openai import OpenAI, APIError, APITimeoutError

log = logging.getLogger("openrouter.health")

@dataclass
class HealthStatus:
    model: str
    available: bool
    latency_ms: float
    checked_at: str
    error: str = ""

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://openrouter.ai/api/v1",
    api_key=os.environ["OPENROUTER_API_KEY"],
    timeout=15.0,
    default_headers={"HTTP-Referer": "https://my-app.com", "X-Title": "health-check"},
)

def probe_model(model_id: str) -> HealthStatus:
    """Send a minimal request to test model availability."""
    start = time.monotonic()
    try:
        response = client.chat.completions.create(
            model=model_id,
            messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "hi"}],
            max_tokens=1,  # Minimal cost
        )
        latency = (time.monotonic() - start) * 1000
        return HealthStatus(
            model=model_id, available=True, latency_ms=round(latency, 1),
            checked_at=datetime.now(timezone.utc).isoformat(),
        )
    except (APIError, APITimeoutError) as e:
        latency = (time.monotonic() - start) * 1000
        return HealthStatus(
            model=model_id, available=False, latency_ms=round(latency, 1),
            checked_at=datetime.now(timezone.utc).isoformat(),
            error=str(e),
        )

def check_critical_models() -> list[HealthStatus]:
    """Probe all critical models."""
    CRITICAL_MODELS = [
        "anthropic/claude-3.5-sonnet",
        "openai/gpt-4o",
        "openai/gpt-4o-mini",
        "google/gemini-2.0-flash-001",
    ]
    results = []
    for model in CRITICAL_MODELS:
        status = probe_model(model)
        log.info(f"{'OK' if status.available else 'FAIL'} {model} ({status.latency_ms}ms)")
        results.append(status)
    return results

Catalog-Based Availability Check

def check_model_exists(model_id: str) -> dict:
    """Check if a model exists in the catalog (no API call cost)."""
    resp = requests.get("https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/models")
    models = {m["id"]: m for m in resp.json()["data"]}

    if model_id in models:
        m = models[model_id]
        return {
            "exists": True,
            "context_length": m["context_length"],
            "pricing": m["pricing"],
        }
    return {"exists": False, "suggestion": find_similar(model_id, models)}

def find_similar(model_id: str, models: dict) -> list[str]:
    """Find models with similar names (for migration when model is removed)."""
    prefix = model_id.split("/")[0]
    return [m for m in models if m.startswith(prefix)][:5]

Availability Monitoring Script

#!/bin/bash
# Run as cron job: */5 * * * * /path/to/check_models.sh

MODELS=("anthropic/claude-3.5-sonnet" "openai/gpt-4o" "openai/gpt-4o-mini")
LOG_FILE="/var/log/openrouter-health.log"

for MODEL in "${MODELS[@]}"; do
  START=$(date +%s%N)
  HTTP_CODE=$(curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" \
    https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d "{\"model\":\"$MODEL\",\"messages\":[{\"role\":\"user\",\"content\":\"ping\"}],\"max_tokens\":1}" \
    --max-time 15)
  END=$(date +%s%N)
  LATENCY=$(( (END - START) / 1000000 ))

  STATUS="OK"
  [ "$HTTP_CODE" != "200" ] && STATUS="FAIL"

  echo "$(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ) $STATUS $MODEL $HTTP_CODE ${LATENCY}ms" >> "$LOG_FILE"
done

Error Handling

find_similar()

Enterprise Considerations

• Health probes cost tokens ($0.0001 or less per probe with

  max_tokens: 1

  ) -- budget for monitoring
• Require 2-3 consecutive failures before marking a model as down to avoid false positives
• Cache the models list and refresh every 5 minutes -- don't hit

  /api/v1/models

  on every request
• Subscribe to OpenRouter announcements for model deprecations and new additions
• Maintain a model alias map so your code uses logical names (e.g., "primary-chat") that you can remap
• Alert when critical models disappear from the catalog, not just when they fail probes

References

• Examples | Errors
• Models API | Status