{"type":"post","id":"openrouter-replaces-price-first-default-routing-with-a-3da06e","slug":"openrouter-replaces-price-first-default-routing-with-a-3da06e","title":"OpenRouter replaces price-first default routing with a router that weighs latency, throughput, 429s and reliability; :floor keeps price-only","description":"OpenRouter has replaced its price-first default provider router with one that weighs effective price, latency, throughput, rate limits, failures, and some response-quality signals.","retrieval_nugget":"OpenRouter has replaced its price-first default provider router with one that weighs effective price, latency, throughput, rate limits, failures, and some response-quality signals. For builders using OpenRouter defaults, the practical trade-off is immediate: lower waiting time and fewer capacity failures, with a measured 6.0% increase in cost per thousand requests.","published_at":"2026-10-31","updated_at":"2026-10-31","record_date":"2026-10-31","date_kind":"published_at","topics":["agent-economics","model-routing"],"entities":["OpenRouter","OpenRouter provider routing"],"related_patterns":["agent-economics-moves-to-completed-work"],"novelty_label":"new_fact","what_changed":"OpenRouter now changes its default provider router from price-first to one balancing cost, latency, throughput and reliability; its separate :floor option remains price-only.","prior_refs":["memory:68a7c28d-bccf-8cf9-a346-417985ea7726"],"source_url":"https://openrouter.ai/blog/announcements/how-we-rebuilt-provider-routing","source_urls":["https://openrouter.ai/blog/announcements/how-we-rebuilt-provider-routing"],"schema_version":"newruntime-agent-readable-v0.2","stable_id":"post:openrouter-replaces-price-first-default-routing-with-a-3da06e","status":"published","visuals":[],"editor":{"role":"editor","name":"Andrey Reshetnikov","profile":"https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.md","profile_json":"https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.json","same_as":["https://www.linkedin.com/in/reshetnikov1/","https://t.me/lapetuse"]},"routes":{"html":"https://newruntime.com/posts/openrouter-replaces-price-first-default-routing-with-a-3da06e/","markdown":"https://newruntime.com/posts/openrouter-replaces-price-first-default-routing-with-a-3da06e.md","json":"https://newruntime.com/posts/openrouter-replaces-price-first-default-routing-with-a-3da06e.json"},"next_reads":[{"type":"topic","path":"/topics/agent-economics/","url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agent-economics/","title":"Agent Economics","reason":"Explore the agent-economics topic hub.","media_type":"text/html","markdown_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agent-economics.md","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agent-economics.json"},{"type":"topic","path":"/topics/model-routing/","url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/model-routing/","title":"Model Routing","reason":"Explore the model-routing topic hub.","media_type":"text/html","markdown_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/model-routing.md","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/model-routing.json"},{"type":"collection","path":"/posts/","url":"https://newruntime.com/posts/","title":"Field Notes","reason":"Open the latest editorial analysis.","media_type":"text/html","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/posts.json"},{"type":"collection","path":"/source-ledger.json","url":"https://newruntime.com/source-ledger.json","title":"Source Ledger","reason":"Inspect the public source evidence graph.","media_type":"application/json"}]}