Model Routing Decision Flow
Frontier vs mini-tier trade-offs, model routing and cascading architectures, batch pricing, and a worked cost model for a real production feature.
Animate: Model Routing Decision Flow
Step through the flow one stage at a time and watch the data move.
Reading Cost-Performance is free. Pro unlocks the other four modes on all LLM Model Landscape topics, so you can go from understanding it to building it.
- SeeThe architecture as diagrams, so you can hold the whole system in your head.
- AnimateStep through the flow one stage at a time and watch the data move.
- TestScenario questions with explanations that show exactly where your model of it breaks.
- BuildA guided implementation with code you can run and adapt for production.
Continue reading
All LLM Model Landscape articles →GPT: OpenAI's Model Family in Practice
The GPT-6 tiers, what reasoning effort replaced, when to use the Responses API over Chat Completions, how the bill is calculated, and what is different on Azure.
Claude: Anthropic's Model Family in Practice
The four Claude tiers, adaptive thinking and effort, the tool-use rules that differ from other providers, prompt caching, and where you can run it.
Llama: Open-Weight Models for Production
The Llama lineup and licence, serving with Ollama and vLLM, GPU memory sizing, and an honest look at when a hosted API is still the better choice.
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