engineering · 1 min read
Cost-Aware Model Routing: Cheap Where Possible, Smart Where Needed
Most LLM calls do not need the flagship model. Cost-aware routing sends easy queries to small models and hard queries to large ones - automatically.
BABhogar AI TeamProduct & Engineering
The flagship model is overkill for most queries. Cost-aware routing sends easy queries to a small fast model, escalates ambiguous ones to mid-tier, and reserves the flagship for genuinely-hard inputs.
Why it matters
The hard part is the classifier - getting routing wrong kills quality. Production routers use a tiny scorer plus per-tenant policy and quality monitoring to keep the cascade calibrated.
How Bhogar AI approaches it
Bhogar AI gateway ships a cost-aware routing strategy with per-tenant policy, quality monitoring and an explicit override per request. Routing decisions appear in the trace so debugging is straightforward.
- Tiny classifier picks tier per request
- Per-tenant policy and overrides
- Quality monitoring per tier
- Trace-visible routing decisions
- A/B harness comparing routing strategies
What you get
Customers running cost-aware routing typically save 35-60% versus always-flagship with no measurable quality regression on user-facing tasks.