The Routing Stack: When Cascade Models Beat One-Size-Fits-All Inference

One flagship model for every call overspends on trivial requests—a tiered routing stack cuts inference 30–45% when cascades are observable and tied to $/decision.

Executive Summary

Most production teams route every large language model (LLM) call through one flagship model because it simplifies eval and avoids "wrong tier" incidents. That default is expensive. A composite workload—support triage, draft generation, and legal escalation—does not need the same inference profile on every request. By implementing a tie…