Choose your models
Your router's catalog is the set of models it can route across. A wider catalog gives the router more strengths to route along, which is where best-of-all-worlds performance comes from. A narrower one is simpler to reason about and needs fewer provider keys.
Pick models in the Models section of the New router form. Model names are fixed because they double as the router's classifier labels, so the only required choice per model is the provider. Pricing and limits are prefilled, and you can adjust them.
Power packages
Three starting points. Toggle on the models in the form, using the names below. Prices are the prefilled list prices per million input / output tokens.
Open-source only
For teams that want open-weights models only.
| Model | Price per Mtok (in / out) |
|---|---|
kimi-k3 | $3 / $15 |
glm-5.3 | $1.4 / $4.4 |
deepseek-v4.1-flash | $0.15 / $0.6 |
Closed-source only
For teams that want proprietary frontier models only.
| Model | Price per Mtok (in / out) |
|---|---|
claude-opus-5 | $5 / $25 |
claude-sonnet-5.5 | $2 / $10 |
gpt-5.6-luna | $0.2 / $1.2 |
Open and closed
The widest catalog, for the best mix of capability and cost.
| Model | Price per Mtok (in / out) |
|---|---|
claude-opus-5.5 | $4 / $20 |
claude-sonnet-5.5 | $2 / $10 |
gpt-6.1-sol | $2 / $10 |
glm-5.3 | $1.4 / $4.4 |
gpt-6-luna | $0.1 / $0.5 |
deepseek-v4.1-flash | $0.15 / $0.6 |
You'll need a provider key for each provider the selected models use. For open-source models, Emissary currently invokes them through OpenRouter. Select OpenRouter as the provider, and if you'd rather use a different gateway, change the base URL to point to any other one.
Model availability and prices change, so check the form for the current list.
Choose a default model
The default model is the anchor of the routing policy. It's required, and it serves any request
that no model is confident about, recorded as default_no_confident. Pricier confident models can
also take a request from it by escalation. See
how a routing decision is made.
That makes it your safety net, so pick a model you'd trust with any request in your workload, not the cheapest one. In the packages above, that usually means one of the larger models.
Tips
- Start with a package, then adjust. You can change the catalog later with Edit configuration.
- Mix price points. A catalog of only expensive models leaves little room to save, and one of only cheap models leaves the router nothing to escalate to.
- Cover your modalities. If you send images, make sure the catalog has models that support vision. The Configuration tab's Vision column shows which do.
- Add models as they ship. See migrate to new models.