03 · ImplementationUPDATED APR 14, 2026

Model routing: optimize costs by using the best model for each task

Model routing matches each query to the cheapest model that meets the quality bar, concentrating expensive reasoning tokens on the planning phase.

85%

cost reduction

Cost reduction for production deployments, while retaining 95% of frontier-model quality

Rule-based routing

Assign complexity tiers to query types. No ML required. Audit your query mix and implement within a week.

Classifier-based routing

Train a lightweight model on production logs to predict which queries need frontier capabilities. Handles the ambiguous middle.

Cascade routing

Start every query on the cheapest model. Escalate only when the output fails a quality check. Progressive cost control.

Source: RouteLLM (ICLR 2025), Anthropic Building Effective Agents, OpenAI Reasoning Best Practices

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