OpenRouter curl examples

Chat completion

curl https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "model": "openai/gpt-4o-mini",
    "messages": [
      {
        "role": "user",
        "content": "What is the meaning of life?"
      }
    ]
  }'

Embeddings

curl https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/embeddings \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "model": "openai/text-embedding-3-small",
    "input": "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
  }'

For multiple texts in one request, pass an array:

curl https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/embeddings \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "model": "openai/text-embedding-3-small",
    "input": [
      "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog",
      "Hello world"
    ]
  }'

Both endpoints are OpenAI-compatible. Browse available models (including embedding ones) at openrouter.ai/models.

Models

Use the Models API endpoint:

curl https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/models \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY"

Useful variations

Get more results (pagination):

curl "https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/models?limit=500" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY"

Filter by modality (text is the default):

# Image generation models only
curl "https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/models?output_modalities=image" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY"

# Embeddings
curl "https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/models?output_modalities=embeddings" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY"

# All modalities
curl "https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/models?output_modalities=all" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY"

The response is a JSON object with a data array. Each entry includes the model id (the slug you use in requests, e.g. openai/gpt-4o-mini), pricing, context length, supported parameters, and other metadata.

Tip: Pipe the output through jq to extract just the model IDs:

curl -s https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/models \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY" | jq -r '.data[].id'