Authentication

routeur.ai uses bearer tokens. Every request to api.routeur.ai must include an Authorization header carrying a routeur.ai API key. Upstream provider keys never leave the routeur.ai control plane — your application only needs the routeur.ai key.

Header format

request headers

Authorization: Bearer sk-r-your_routeur_api_key
Content-Type:  application/json

Key format

routeur.ai keys are prefixed with sk-r- so they're easy to spot in logs and secret scanners. The plaintext value is shown once at creation time; routeur.ai stores only a one-way hash.

Loading the key

Treat the routeur.ai key as an environment-level secret. Never commit it. The standard names used in the SDK examples are:

ROUTEUR_KEY — the recommended variable name.
OPENAI_API_KEY — works when reusing the OpenAI SDK with no code changes, as long as you also override the base URL.

Auth errors

401unauthorizedmissing or unknown key

The Authorization header is absent, malformed, or carries a key routeur.ai does not recognise.

402billing_inactiveno active subscription

The key is valid but the owning organisation has no active subscription.

A revoked or disabled key returns 401 unauthorized, the same as an unknown key — the gateway does not distinguish the two to the caller.

Rotating keys

Create a replacement key before revoking the current one. Roll the new value through deployment, then revoke the old key from the dashboard. Revocation takes effect within seconds because the gateway checks key validity on every request.

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