Setting Up MonoRouter for Your Development Team

MonoRouter works great for individual developers, but it really shines with teams. Pool your team's Claude subscriptions into a shared routing layer and everyone benefits from higher throughput and lower costs.

This guide walks through a full team setup — from account creation to verifying that every developer is routing through MonoRouter.

Step 1: Create the Team Account

Sign up at monorouter.dev/signup. This will be your team's primary account — it manages the session pool, API keys, and usage dashboard.

After signup you'll land on the dashboard. Copy your API key from the Keys page — you'll need it in Step 4.

Step 2: Connect Claude Accounts

Each team member connects their Claude subscription to MonoRouter. The more accounts in the pool, the higher your team's collective throughput. MonoRouter distributes requests across all connected accounts using least-connections routing.

You can mix subscription tiers — some members on Pro ($20/mo), others on Max ($100/mo). MonoRouter routes to all of them based on availability and current load. Max accounts get slightly more traffic because they have higher rate limits, but Pro accounts contribute meaningfully to the pool.

Step 3: Distribute API Keys

Head to the Keys page in the dashboard and generate a key for each developer or shared service:

• mr_live_alice_dev — Alice's local development
• mr_live_bob_dev — Bob's local development
• mr_live_ci_review — CI pipeline for code reviews
• mr_live_ci_tests — CI pipeline for test generation

Each key gives access to the full session pool. You can revoke individual keys without affecting others — useful when someone leaves the team or a CI key leaks.

Step 4: Configure Developer Environments

Each developer adds two environment variables. Here's how to set it up for different shells:

Bash (~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile):

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="mr_live_alice_dev"
export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL="https://api.monorouter.dev/v1"

Zsh (~/.zshrc):

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="mr_live_alice_dev"
export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL="https://api.monorouter.dev/v1"

Fish (~/.config/fish/config.fish):

set -gx ANTHROPIC_API_KEY "mr_live_alice_dev"
set -gx ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL "https://api.monorouter.dev/v1"

Windows PowerShell ($PROFILE):

$env:ANTHROPIC_API_KEY = "mr_live_alice_dev"
$env:ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL = "https://api.monorouter.dev/v1"

From that point, every tool that uses the Anthropic SDK — Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, custom scripts — routes through MonoRouter. No per-tool configuration needed.

Step 5: Set Up a Shared .env.example

For projects that use dotenv files, add a template to your repo so new team members get started immediately:

# .env.example — copy to .env and fill in your key
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=mr_live_YOUR_KEY_HERE
ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=https://api.monorouter.dev/v1

Add .env to your .gitignore (it almost certainly already is) so keys don't get committed:

echo ".env" >> .gitignore

Step 6: Verify the Setup

Run a quick check to confirm routing is working. This one-liner hits the MonoRouter endpoint and prints the response:

# verify_monorouter.py
import anthropic

client = anthropic.Anthropic()  # reads env vars automatically

response = client.messages.create(
    model="claude-sonnet-4-20250514",
    max_tokens=50,
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Say 'MonoRouter is working' and nothing else."}],
)
print(response.content[0].text)
print(f"Model: {response.model}")
print(f"Tokens: {response.usage.input_tokens} in, {response.usage.output_tokens} out")

$ python verify_monorouter.py
MonoRouter is working
Model: claude-sonnet-4-20250514
Tokens: 18 in, 7 out

If you see output, you're routing through MonoRouter. The request will also appear in the dashboard activity log within seconds.

Monitoring Usage

The MonoRouter dashboard shows usage broken down by API key, session, and model. At a glance you can see:

• Per-key usage — which team members and services are heaviest users
• Per-session health — which Claude accounts are active, throttled, or disconnected
• Per-model split — how much of your usage is Opus vs Sonnet vs Haiku
• Request timeline — spikes, dips, and patterns over time

Use this to identify when you need more capacity. If you're consistently seeing queued requests during peak hours, it's time to add another Claude account to the pool.

Scaling Up

Need more throughput? Add more Claude accounts to the pool. Each additional account increases your team's capacity linearly. There's no configuration change needed on the client side — MonoRouter detects new sessions and starts routing to them immediately.

Cost Optimization

For most teams, a mix of Pro and Max subscriptions is optimal. Here's a quick comparison for a team of six:

Setup	Monthly Cost	Effective Throughput
6× Pro ($20)	$120	Moderate — good for normal dev work
3× Pro + 3× Max	$360	High — handles CI + heavy dev work
6× Max ($100)	$600	Maximum — sustained high-volume usage
API only (no MonoRouter)	$1,000–2,000+	Varies — scales with token consumption

Start with Pro subscriptions for everyone. If you're hitting rate limits, upgrade your heaviest users to Max before adding more Pro accounts — Max has significantly higher per-session limits.