OpenRouter launched a rebuilt Auto Router (openrouter/auto) alongside a new coding-specialized router, Auto Code (openrouter/auto-code), on November 6. OpenRouter says the new stack outperforms the previous router by up to 4x on its benchmarks, with the routing decision itself about 3x faster at p90 — 0.65 seconds against 1.96. Each request is weighed on eleven factors plus live price, provider health and cache status, inside the caller's guardrails, zero-data-retention settings, allowlists and bring-your-own-key policies. Auto Router already handles more than 2.5 trillion tokens a month, according to OpenRouter.

Auto Code is the headline claim: across five benchmarks it posts an aggregate cost of $1.64 per task against $6.43 for Claude Opus 5.5 at high effort — roughly 74% cheaper at, OpenRouter says, comparable scores, with beta traffic producing a quarter as many invalid tool calls as the old router. Those are OpenRouter's own tests, not independent results.

Existing openrouter/auto callers need no slug change, but they do get a different, pricier-leaning model mix by default overnight; setting cost_tier=low restores the older cheap bias. Teams pinned to Auto for mixed or coding traffic should re-check their cost dashboards before assuming yesterday's routing still holds.