Routeplane speaks the OpenAI wire protocol, so an SDK is never required — pointing your existing OpenAI client at the gateway is the whole integration. The official SDKs are an optional ergonomics layer on top of that: typed header builders, a drop-in client that reads the gateway's decision metadata, and typed access to the surfaces OpenAI clients don't know about (prompts, logs, FinOps, cache, residency).
pip install routeplane — headers(), the Routeplane client, async, and framework adapters.
TypeScript SDK →npm i @routeplane/sdk — drop-in OpenAI subclass plus a zero-dependency core client.
Two layers, pick your depth
Both SDKs are built the same way, so what you learn in one carries to the other. You choose how much of the gateway you want to adopt:
Layer 1 — headers with your existing client
Routeplane's per-request behaviour (provider fallback, routing strategy, residency, FinOps labels) is all driven by x-routeplane-* request headers. The SDKs ship a typed builder — headers() in Python, createHeaders() in TypeScript — that produces exactly those headers as a plain map. It drops into any client's extra-headers escape hatch, so it works far beyond these SDKs: the stock OpenAI client, LangChain, LlamaIndex, CrewAI, or the Vercel AI SDK.
Layer 2 — the full client
The Routeplane client wraps the OpenAI client you already know — Routeplane subclasses openai.OpenAI in Python and extends the OpenAI client in TypeScript. It wires up auth, lets you set default routing once, decodes the gateway's response headers into typed metadata (which provider actually served the request, the cache disposition, spend headroom, whether PII was masked), and adds typed namespaces for the non-OpenAI surfaces.
You can always leave. Because the wire format is OpenAI's, an SDK is a convenience, not a lock-in. The header builder emits standard headers; the client is a thin subclass. Point base_url back at the provider and everything reverts to a plain OpenAI call.
Install
pip install routeplanenpm i @routeplane/sdk # openai is an optional peer dependencyWhich page do I want?
| You want to… | Go to |
|---|---|
| Use Routeplane from Python | Python SDK |
| Use Routeplane from TypeScript / Node | TypeScript SDK |
| Drive the gateway from your terminal | CLI |
| Give an AI assistant (Claude Code, Cursor) gateway tools | MCP server |
| Use any other language, or just raw HTTP | SDKs & clients |
Both SDKs are Apache-2.0 and track the same OpenAI-compatible surface as the gateway. If your language has an OpenAI client but no Routeplane SDK, you lose nothing essential — see SDKs & clients for the base-URL-only approach and the full header reference.