The nRouter Dashboard Guide: A Read-Only Home and a Task Map

Summary of nRouter's dashboard guide, exactly as documented: what the console home shows, where each task lives, and the routing and key rules an operator needs.

What the home page shows

The dashboard home is a read-only summary of the organization. Nothing is configured on it.

Home element	What it shows
Spend and budget	Recent spend alongside the applicable budget or cap
Credit balance	Available prepaid credits
Requests and keys	Recent request activity and the number of active virtual keys
Top models and endpoints	Where the traffic is going

The task map

If you want to…	Go to
Make your first API call	Quick Start
Create or manage a virtual key	API Key Management
Test a model interactively	Playground
Inspect a request or trace	Observability & Logs
Choose Direct or nrouter/auto, set fallbacks	Router Settings
Set a spend limit	Budget Controls
See usage and spend breakdowns	Analytics & Reports
Manage credits and invoices	Billing & Credits
Configure content-safety rules	Guardrails

Direct vs nrouter/auto

Routing is configured under /[organization]/router-settings; the model string selects the behaviour.

• Direct — the named model answers; nRouter never swaps it. A different model answers only through a fallback you configured yourself, and only when the provider cannot take the request.
• nrouter/auto — nRouter chooses an eligible model from the organization's candidates, by the saved preference: Best for the task (default) or Lowest cost. x-nr-model names the model that answered.

A fallback is tried only when the provider cannot take the request: an upstream 429, 503 or Anthropic 529; a 401 or 404 from a misconfigured provider deployment; a connection that never opened; or no first byte in time.

Key and budget rules

• A virtual key's secret is shown exactly once, at creation. Afterwards the dashboard shows only the key's name and last four characters. Lost secret → create a replacement key, move traffic to it, revoke the old one.
• Hard spending cap reached → subsequent requests with that key return HTTP 402 until the cap is raised or the budget window resets.
• A soft threshold does not block: it adds an x-nr-budget-warning header to responses.
• Some controls are limited to authorized roles; a missing page or setting means asking the Owner or an Org Admin.
• ⌘K (Mac) / Ctrl+K opens the search/command menu to jump to any page.

Reference: https://nrouter.ai/docs/guides/dashboard