AI engineering glossary · Agents tools MCP
What is model routing?
Model routing: Choosing which model handles each request or step, for example sending simple steps to a small cheap model and hard reasoning to a large one. It reduces cost and delay in agent systems with little loss of quality when routing is accurate.
Model routing: an example
A router sends 'What are your opening hours?' to a small model and a multi-document legal analysis to a large model.
Related terms
- Router pattern
- Token budget
- Orchestrator-worker pattern
- Cost per request
More Agents tools MCP terms
- Multi-agent system
- OpenAI Agents SDK
- Orchestrator-worker pattern
- Parallelisation pattern
- Plan-and-execute
- Planning (agents)
- Procedural memory
- Program-aided language model
Where you learn it
Model routing is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.