Passthrough

--- title: "Passthrough API" description: "Route provider-native API requests through Aurora without request or response translation." icon: "route" tag: "Beta" ---

Overview

The passthrough API proxies provider-native requests through Aurora without translating the request or response body. Use it when a client library expects a provider's native API shape instead of the OpenAI-compatible /v1 format.

Passthrough routes use this pattern:

/p/{provider}/{endpoint}

For example, Anthropic SDK requests to /v1/messages can be pointed at:

http://your-aurora-host/p/anthropic

Aurora normalizes the optional v1 segment and forwards the request upstream as the provider-native endpoint.

Authentication

Aurora handles gateway authentication first. The client must send an Aurora bearer token:

Authorization: Bearer <AURORA_MASTER_KEY or managed API key>

Aurora strips client Authorization and X-Api-Key headers before forwarding, then injects the upstream provider credential configured on the server.

Enabled Providers

Passthrough is enabled by default for these provider types:

ENABLED_PASSTHROUGH_PROVIDERS=openai,anthropic,openrouter,zai,vllm

Set ENABLED_PASSTHROUGH_PROVIDERS to change which provider types are exposed via passthrough.

Environment Variables

Limitations

• Aurora does not translate passthrough request or response bodies
• Provider-native error bodies and status codes are proxied as-is
• Features that depend on OpenAI-compatible request/response shapes (guardrails, cache, usage) may not apply the same way as /v1 traffic
• Passthrough is in Beta

SDK Integration

For SDK-specific setup instructions (Anthropic SDK, etc.), see SDK & Client Integrations.