How we rebuilt provider routing for better, faster inference

OpenRouter announced a new default provider routing algorithm that scores endpoints on realized price, time to first token, throughput, error and rate-limit rates, and output quality rather than input token price alone. In a week-long switchback experiment over 24 million requests, the new router cut TTFT p50 by 16.9%, raised throughput p50 by 16.3%, and reduced requests hitting at least one 429 by 67%, with cost per K requests up 6.0%. Explicit sorts, provider.order, and cache-aware conversation pinning still work as before, and price-only routing remains available via provider.sort "price" or the :floor suffix.