Practical step-by-step guide for switching Claude Code to cheaper
OpenRouter models (GLM-5.2, Kimi K2.7-code, DeepSeek V3.1, Qwen3 Coder)
while keeping the Anthropic Pro login. Includes verified pricing
(June 2026, from OpenRouter API), a worked cost example, a quality
assessment, and troubleshooting.
Notable callouts verified by live API tests:
- moonshotai/kimi-k2.7-code is the current, valid slug (newer than k2.6).
- openrouter/free is a meta-slug that may route to a non-coding model
(e.g. nvidia/nemotron-3.5-content-safety); qwen3-coder:free is the
safer free choice for coding, though rate-limited.
- Reasoning models can exhaust max_tokens in the thinking step.
Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
