# LowRouter

> Sustainable, sovereign API gateway for large language models. Track energy and carbon per request, route across providers, pay in credits.

LowRouter is an OpenAI-compatible HTTP gateway. It routes inference requests to multiple providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, and others), reports per-request energy and carbon estimates, and exposes the same usage in a developer dashboard.

## Philosophy
Why LowRouter exists, what it stands for, and where it draws its lines.

- [Why LowRouter exists](/docs/philosophy/why-lowrouter.md): The problem we set out to solve, what we built, and what we deliberately left out.
- [Sustainability-first](/docs/philosophy/sustainability-first.md): What we measure, what we don't, and how we keep the platform itself within budget.
- [Sovereignty and transparency](/docs/philosophy/sovereignty-and-transparency.md): Where we run, what we expose, and how to verify it.
- [Principles in practice](/docs/philosophy/principles-in-practice.md): How the principles above map to concrete choices in the product.

## Getting started
Set up an account, create an API key, send your first completion, and learn the dashboard in fifteen minutes.

- [Create an account](/docs/getting-started/account.md): Sign up, verify your email, and add an initial credit balance so the first request goes through.
- [Create your first API key](/docs/getting-started/api-keys.md): How LowRouter virtual keys work, where to store them, and how to rotate or revoke them.
- [Run your first completion](/docs/getting-started/first-completion.md): A single curl request, the response shape, and what each field means.
- [Tour the dashboard](/docs/getting-started/dashboard-tour.md): What the four landing widgets show, where to drill in, and how to read the eco panel without overinterpreting it.

## Guides
Day-to-day operations: API keys, credits and billing, usage accounting, and the dashboard in depth.

- [API key management](/docs/guides/api-keys.md): Virtual keys in depth — scoping, rotation, revocation, and the policies you can attach.
- [Credits and billing](/docs/guides/credits-and-billing.md): How credits work, what counts as usage, how invoices are produced, and how pricing maps to upstream providers.
- [Usage accounting](/docs/guides/usage-accounting.md): What's recorded per request, how to query and export it, and how long records are kept.
- [Dashboard deep-dive](/docs/guides/dashboard-deep-dive.md): Every chart on the dashboard, how it's computed, and how to filter it.
- [Pricing and currency conversion](/docs/guides/pricing-and-fx.md): How daily ECB exchange rates and a fixed markup convert non-EUR provider prices to the EUR prices we charge against your balance.

## Integrations
Copy-paste snippets for the OpenAI SDK, Anthropic SDK, and the LLM tools developers actually use.

- [curl](/docs/integrations/curl.md): The bare HTTP request — useful for debugging, scripting, and confirming the gateway behaviour.
- [OpenAI SDK (Python)](/docs/integrations/openai-sdk-python.md): Point the official OpenAI Python SDK at LowRouter by changing two arguments.
- [OpenAI SDK (TypeScript)](/docs/integrations/openai-sdk-typescript.md): Use the official openai npm package with LowRouter from Node, Bun, Deno, or the browser (server-only).
- [Anthropic SDK](/docs/integrations/anthropic-sdk.md): Use the official anthropic SDK with LowRouter when you want Claude-shaped requests through the gateway.
- [ChatBox](/docs/integrations/chatbox.md): Configure the ChatBox desktop client to talk to LowRouter.
- [OpenCode](/docs/integrations/opencode.md): Configure OpenCode to use LowRouter as its model provider.
- [Cline](/docs/integrations/cline.md): Configure the Cline VS Code agent to use LowRouter.
- [Goose](/docs/integrations/goose.md): Configure the Goose agent to use LowRouter.
- [Claude Code](/docs/integrations/claude-code.md): Configure Claude Code to route through LowRouter via the Anthropic-compatible endpoint.
- [Generic OpenAI-compatible clients](/docs/integrations/openai-compatible.md): The pattern that works for any tool that lets you set a base URL and an API key.

## Models & providers
What's routable, how routing decisions are made, and what the per-request metadata means.

- [Available models](/docs/models/available.md): How the model catalogue is structured and what to look at on each model card.
- [Routing](/docs/models/routing.md): How lowrouter/auto picks, how ties are broken, and what the route overrides actually do.
- [Per-request metadata](/docs/models/per-request-metadata.md): The lowrouter block on every response — every field, what it means, and when it can be missing.

## Sustainable AI
Methodology, data sources, limits, and practical recommendations for reducing the footprint of inference.

- [Methodology](/docs/sustainable-ai/methodology.md): The exact formula, coefficients, and confidence bands behind every energy and carbon number on the platform.
- [Data sources](/docs/sustainable-ai/data-sources.md): Where the parameter counts, the energy formula coefficients, and the grid intensities come from.
- [Limits and what we don't claim](/docs/sustainable-ai/limits.md): The explicit out-of-scope list — what the eco numbers do not represent.
- [Reduce your footprint](/docs/sustainable-ai/reduce-your-footprint.md): Concrete changes to your application that move the dashboard's numbers down.

## Other

- [FAQ](/docs/faq.md): Short answers to the questions we get most often about LowRouter.