--- title: The nRouter Dashboard: A Read-Only Home and a Nine-Row... description: nRouter's dashboard guide treats the console as a map of nine tasks, each routed to its own section. The home page is read-only, showing spend, budget, credit... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-nrouter-dashboard-a-read-only-home-and-a-nine-row-task-map-hrumcudej twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The nRouter Dashboard: A Read-Only Home and a Nine-Row Task Map | daily.dev og:description: nRouter's dashboard guide treats the console as a map of nine tasks, each routed to its own section. The home page is read-only, showing spend, budget, credit... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-nrouter-dashboard-a-read-only-home-and-a-nine-row-task-map-hrumcudej og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/HruMcuDEJ.png og:image:alt: The nRouter Dashboard: A Read-Only Home and a Nine-Row Task Map og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The nRouter Dashboard: A Read-Only Home and a Nine-Row Task Map **[C\# Corner](https://daily.dev/sources/csharpcorner)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary nRouter's dashboard guide treats the console as a map of nine tasks, each routed to its own section. The home page is read-only, showing spend, budget, credit balance, request activity, active virtual key count, and top models and endpoints. Routing has two modes: Direct names a fixed model with manual fallbacks, while nrouter/auto picks from candidate models by preference (Best for the task or Lowest cost), with the answering model reported in the x-nr-model header. Fallbacks trigger on an upstream 429, 503, or Anthropic 529, a 401 or 404 from a misconfigured provider deployment, a connection that never opened, or a provider that sends no first byte in time. Virtual key secrets show once at creation. A hard spending cap returns HTTP 402 on subsequent requests, while a soft threshold just adds an x-nr-budget-warning header. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What's the difference between Direct mode and nrouter/auto in nRouter's routing settings? Direct mode locks requests to a named model, which nRouter never swaps except through a fallback you configure yourself, and only when the provider can't take the request. nrouter/auto instead lets the gateway pick an eligible model from your organization's candidates based on a saved preference, either 'Best for the task' (the default) or 'Lowest cost', reporting the chosen model in the x-nr-model response header. _Comparing LLM routing strategies for production reliability? Track these gateway configuration patterns on daily.dev._ ### What triggers a fallback to a different model in nRouter? Fallbacks trigger on an upstream 429 or 503 response, an Anthropic 529 error, a 401 or 404 from a misconfigured provider deployment, a connection that never opens, or a provider that sends no first byte within the timeout. These conditions apply in Direct mode, where a different model only answers through a fallback you explicitly configured. _Debugging flaky LLM provider calls? Keep reliability patterns like these close on daily.dev._ ### What happens when a virtual key hits its hard spending cap in nRouter? Requests using that key return HTTP 402 until the cap is raised or the budget window resets. A soft spending threshold behaves differently: it blocks nothing and simply adds an x-nr-budget-warning header to responses, letting requests continue while signaling that spend is approaching the limit. _Setting spend guardrails on API keys? Developers compare budget-enforcement approaches like this on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [API Key Authentication Done Right: Lessons from nRouter's Shown-Once Key Design](https://daily.dev/posts/api-key-authentication-done-right-lessons-from-nrouter-s-shown-once-key-design-pu8yrkbg0) · C\# Corner · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [OpenRouter: One API Key to Rule Them All](https://daily.dev/posts/openrouter-one-api-key-to-rule-them-all-ektckqyxv) · Playful Programming · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#observability](https://daily.dev/tags/observability), [#api-gateway](https://daily.dev/tags/api-gateway), [#ai-gateway](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-gateway) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-nrouter-dashboard-a-read-only-home-and-a-nine-row-task-map-hrumcudej) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The nRouter Dashboard: A Read-Only Home and a Nine-Row Task Map","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-nrouter-dashboard-a-read-only-home-and-a-nine-row-task-map-hrumcudej","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-nrouter-dashboard-a-read-only-home-and-a-nine-row-task-map-hrumcudej"},"datePublished":"2026-10-30T06:55:33.604Z","dateModified":"2026-10-30T06:56:02.164Z","description":"nRouter's dashboard guide treats the console as a map of nine tasks, each routed to its own section. 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