How to Use OpenRouter API in VS Code | BYOK GitHub Copilot

🔑 How to use OpenRouter API in VS Code and unlock 300+ AI models inside GitHub Copilot — step by step. By default, VS Code Copilot only shows a limited set of models. In this tutorial, I'll show you how to bring your own OpenRouter API key (BYOK) and instantly access hundreds of AI models — all from within VS Code's built-in AI chat. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⏱️ CHAPTERS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0:00 – Intro 0:10 – Step 1: Create an API Key on OpenRouter 1:00 – Step 2: Add the API Key in VS Code (Manage Models / Copilot Chat) 2:00 – Step 3: Browse & Select Models from OpenRouter 3:30 – Step 4: Test an API Request — Success! 4:08 – Step 5: Check Activity on OpenRouter Dashboard ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔗 LINKS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🌐 OpenRouter: https://openrouter.ai 💻 VS Code: https://code.visualstudio.com 📖 OpenRouter + GitHub Copilot Docs: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/copilot/customization/language-models#_bring-your-own-language-model-key ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📌 WHAT YOU'LL LEARN ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ✅ How to generate an OpenRouter API key ✅ How to add a custom API key in VS Code Copilot (Bring Your Own Key / BYOK) ✅ How to access 300+ AI models (GPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Llama, etc.) ✅ How to make a successful API request inside VS Code ✅ How to monitor your usage in the OpenRouter activity dashboard ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔍 WHO THIS IS FOR ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ - Developers who want more AI model choices in VS Code - Anyone who wants to use OpenRouter instead of paying for multiple AI subscriptions - Copilot users who want to bring their own API key (BYOK) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #OpenRouter #VSCode #GitHubCopilot #AIModels #CodingTutorial