curl

The simplest way to talk to the gateway. If something works in curl but not in your SDK, the SDK is the thing to debug.

A non-streaming completion

Bash

curl https://lowrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LOWROUTER_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "lowrouter/auto",
    "messages": [
      {"role": "user", "content": "In one sentence, what is a vector database?"}
    ]
  }'

The response shape is documented in chat completions.

A streaming completion

Use -N to disable curl’s output buffering, and set "stream": true in the body:

Bash

curl -N https://lowrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LOWROUTER_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "lowrouter/auto",
    "stream": true,
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Count to 5 slowly"}]
  }'

The response is a Server-Sent Events stream; the format is in streaming.

Listing models

Bash

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

Returns the routable models with their per-token prices and basic metadata. Cache the result locally — it does not change between requests within a single user session.

Pinning a provider and region

Override lowrouter/auto by sending an explicit model string and a route block:

Bash

curl https://lowrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LOWROUTER_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "openai/gpt-4o-mini",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}],
    "route": {"region": "eu-west", "provider": "openai"}
  }'

If no provider in the requested region is available the request returns 503 rather than falling back silently. See routing for the full set of route options.

Looking up a generation later

Every response carries a lowrouter.generation_id. Pass it to:

Bash

curl https://lowrouter.ai/api/v1/generation/$GENERATION_ID \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LOWROUTER_API_KEY"

You get the same record the dashboard shows, including the eco numbers and the routing trace.