Model Routing for AI Apps

Model routing is the practice of sending each request to the model that best matches its difficulty, cost target, and latency needs. This is a practical way to improve both efficiency and product quality.

Why Route Requests

Not every task needs a frontier model. Simple classification, extraction, and summarization requests can often be handled by smaller or cheaper models, while complex reasoning or sensitive tasks may need a stronger one.

Routing Signals

• Query length and complexity
• Required output format
• Domain sensitivity
• User tier or SLA
• Confidence from a lightweight classifier

Production Benefit

Good routing avoids the false choice between “always use the best model” and “always use the cheapest model.” It lets a product adapt intelligently on a request-by-request basis.