Docs

Migrating from OpenAI

The two values that change — and an exact list of where we differ from OpenAI.

If you call OpenAI directly today, the migration is two lines. This page says exactly what is identical and where we differ, so nothing surprises you.

What changes

diff

- base_url="https://api.openai.com/v1"
+ base_url="https://iranrouter.com/v1"

- api_key="sk-..."
+ api_key="ir-..."

That is all. The rest of your code is untouched.

What is identical

The chat-completions request and response shape, streaming and not.
Tools, structured output, images, and the usual sampling parameters.
The error envelope (error.type, error.message, error.code).
OpenAI-style rate-limit headers.

Real differences

Topic	OpenAI	IranRouter
Model name	`gpt-4o-mini`	both `gpt-4o-mini` and the full `openai/gpt-4o-mini` — see models
Currency	USD	Rial, at the daily FX rate
Payment	Credit card	Prepaid wallet + official invoice
Other vendors' models	Not available	Same key, same URL — Claude, Gemini and the rest
Other endpoints	embeddings, images, audio, responses	Not offered yet

Environment variables

Most tools read these two standard variables, so often you touch no code at all:

bash

export OPENAI_BASE_URL="https://iranrouter.com/v1"
export OPENAI_API_KEY="ir-..."

Some older libraries look for OPENAI_API_BASE instead of OPENAI_BASE_URL. If your tool will not connect, set both.

The origin without /v1 is occasionally needed too: https://iranrouter.com