Skip to the document
Madhuopen lab
Outcome School · Other AI topics15 min read

by Amit Shekhar · 9 May 2026

LLM Routing

LLM Routing, why it matters, and how to send each user query to the right LLM based on cost, latency, and quality.

2,851 words#llm#ai#machine-learning4 recall cards

LLM Routing
Read on Outcome School ↗then come back to lock it in
Before you read, guess

What three factors make choosing between frontier and small models significant?

Ten seconds, a guess, then read — a wrong guess still makes the answer stick.

What this article covers

  1. The Big Picture
  2. What is LLM Routing
  3. Why we need LLM Routing
  4. Anatomy of an LLM Router
  5. Routing Strategies
  6. A Full Trace Example
  7. LLM Routing vs Mixture of Experts
  8. When LLM Routing is Worth It
  9. Common Mistakes and How to Fix Them

The article lives on outcomeschool.com. Read it there, then come back: the tutor in the margin has read it and will answer questions, and the questions below check what stayed.

Before you go

In one sentence, what was this chapter about?

From memory, without scrolling up. Writing it is what makes it yours; the grade is only to show you what you had.

How sure?