Migrate from OpenAI to Meliai – Two-Line Change Required

Meliai implements the OpenAI API shape exactly — the same request fields, the same response structure, the same streaming format, and the same SDK interfaces. Migrating means changing two values: your API key and the base_url. Every other line of your existing code stays untouched.

Get a Meliai API key

Create a key at meliai.ai/account/api/keys. It will be formatted as sk-mel-<KEY>.Store it in your environment alongside (or instead of) your existing OpenAI key:

export MELIAI_API_KEY="sk-mel-<YOUR_KEY>"

If some services in your stack still need the OpenAI key, keep both environment variables. You can reference OPENAI_API_KEY for those services and MELIAI_API_KEY for Meliai-routed calls.

Update base_url and api_key

Open the file where you initialise your OpenAI client and make the following two-line change:

import os
from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    api_key="sk-openai-...",              
    api_key=os.environ["MELIAI_API_KEY"], 
    base_url="https://api.meliai.ai/v1", 
)

For Node.js projects the change is identical in shape:

import OpenAI from "openai";

const client = new OpenAI({
  apiKey: "sk-openai-...",                    
  apiKey: process.env.MELIAI_API_KEY,         
  baseURL: "https://api.meliai.ai/v1",        
});

That is the complete migration for SDK-based code. No other changes are required.

Pick a model

OpenAI model names (e.g. gpt-4o, gpt-3.5-turbo) don’t map 1:1 to Meliai model IDs, because Meliai routes exclusively to open-weight models. Browse equivalent models by capability at meliai.ai/hub, or list them programmatically:

curl https://api.meliai.ai/v1/models \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $MELIAI_API_KEY"

Substitute the model ID you choose into your model field:

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="<MODEL_ID>",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}],
)

Optionally add a routing suffix

Meliai lets you influence how your request is routed across EU providers by appending a suffix to the model ID. No code changes beyond the suffix are needed.

Suffix	Behaviour
`:balanced`	Default. Balances latency, cost, and availability.
`:speed`	Routes to the fastest available provider.
`:price`	Routes to the lowest-cost provider.
`:eco`	Routes to the highest renewable-energy provider.
`:batch`	Queues the request for asynchronous batch processing.

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="<MODEL_ID>:eco",  # prefer renewable-energy providers
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Summarise this document."}],
)

See the Routing page for the full details.

All OpenAI SDK features work identically through Meliai: streaming (stream=True), tool calling, vision (image inputs), structured output (response_format), and logprobs. You do not need to change any feature-specific code.

What you gain after migrating

Switching to Meliai gives you everything your existing OpenAI code already produces, plus:

EU data residency — requests are routed only to providers inside the European Union.
GDPR compliance — your data is never used for model training.
Environmental telemetry — every response carries an environment_impact block with energy, carbon, water, and renewable-percentage figures for that specific call.
Auto-failover — if one EU provider is unavailable, Meliai automatically retries on another, with no change to your code.

Overview

Models & Routing

Features

Privacy

Migrate from OpenAI to Meliai – Two-Line Change Required

What you gain after migrating

​What you gain after migrating

What you gain after migrating