Routing LLM Traffic by Cost vs Quality
Not every request needs your most expensive model. Here is a decision framework for routing LLM traffic by cost and quality — which tasks to send cheap, which to send premium, and how to prove the split works.
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Not every request needs your most expensive model. Here is a decision framework for routing LLM traffic by cost and quality — which tasks to send cheap, which to send premium, and how to prove the split works.
Randomly splitting LLM traffic gives you flaky, unrepeatable experiments. Here is how hash-based deterministic A/B testing splits traffic consistently per user, so your model comparison is actually measurable.
When a provider 5xxs or rate-limits you, your app shouldn't go down with it. Here is how fallback chains on an LLM gateway reroute to a healthy provider mid-request — without changing your code.
Request count and dollar cost tell different stories. Here is how cost-vs-usage analytics surface the low-volume model that dominates your bill — and the cheap one you can route more traffic to.
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An LLM gateway is a single endpoint that routes to every model provider while handling keys, cost, rate limits, and safety. Here is what it does, when you need one, and how to evaluate it.