OpenRouter Paid Fallback

Set OpenClaw to use a paid OpenRouter model first and fall back to free models when quota is exhausted or rate-limited. Use when the user wants a paid OpenRouter model such as gpt-5.4-mini as the primary model with automatic free fallback.

Configure

1. Keep the OpenRouter API key present in config.
2. Set agents.defaults.model.primary to the requested paid model.
3. Set agents.defaults.model.fallbacks to:
   • openrouter/free
   • nvidia/nemotron-3-nano-30b-a3b:free
   • qwen/qwen3-next-80b-a3b-instruct:free
   • stepfun/step-3.5-flash:free
   • arcee-ai/trinity-mini:free
4. Restart the gateway.
5. Verify with openclaw status or /status.

Defaults

• Primary: openrouter/openai/gpt-5.4-mini
• Keep the same fallback list unless the user asks otherwise.

Rules

• Edit only the model-routing keys.
• Preserve unrelated config.
• If restart fails, check gateway status and remove stale config entries before retrying.