Codex Router Merges DeepSeek and Kimi Into OpenAI's Picker at 89x Lower Cost
A local router merges Kimi, DeepSeek, and other external models into the Codex picker without kicking out your native GPT models or ChatGPT login.
PRO- Codex Router merges Kimi and DeepSeek into Codex's native model picker without replacing GPT models or ChatGPT login
- Uses a pinned LiteLLM adapter to translate between Codex's Responses API and providers' Chat Completions API
- Ships four picker entries: Kimi K3 OAuth, Kimi K3 API, and DeepSeek V4 Flash and Pro
- Credential isolation per provider on 127.0.0.1, with random internal loopback keys between hops
- Guided installer, doctor command, and one-command rollback of recognized older routers
- MIT licensed, 2,600+ stars, install via the GitHub repo
If you have tried plugging DeepSeek or Kimi into OpenAI's Codex, you probably hit the same wall: the official setup overwrites your base URL and your GPT models quietly vanish from the picker. Codex Router is a community project that sits between Codex and the outside world, merging external providers into the native model catalog instead of replacing it.
The repo has quietly climbed past 2,600 stars because it turns the picker into something closer to a multi-model IDE. One early user put it bluntly: sol, grok, kimi and deepseek all sit in the same picker, and you grab whichever one fits the task.
What it actually does
Codex Router is a free, open-source, credential-isolating model router that lets you use DeepSeek, Kimi, GLM, Grok, Claude and account-visible GitHub Copilot models inside the Codex App and CLI. Rather than swap your provider, it speaks the Responses API and merges external entries into Codex's native model catalog, so routed models appear in the normal picker next to the native GPT models.
The picker exposes four external entries out of the box:
- Kimi K3 (OAuth): reuses your existing Kimi Code CLI session
- Kimi K3 (API): uses a separately billed Kimi Platform API key
- DeepSeek V4 Flash (API): the cheap, fast agent model
- DeepSeek V4 Pro (API): the frontier-tier DeepSeek
Kimi Code OAuth and Kimi Platform API are intentionally separate because they use different billing systems, so both entries coexist in the picker.
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