SmartRouter — One API for All AI Models

As of mid-2026, the LLM landscape has consolidated around four major providers: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and DeepSeek. Each has 3-5 tiers of models. Here is when to use each one.

OpenAI (GPT Family)

GPT-4o ($2.50/1M input): Best general-purpose model. Strong at coding, reasoning, and following instructions. Fast inference (sub-second for short responses). Use for: customer-facing chat, code generation, data analysis.

GPT-4o-mini ($0.15/1M input): 90% of GPT-4o quality at 1/16th the cost. Use for: classification, extraction, simple Q&A, content moderation.

GPT-4o Pro ($15/1M input): Extended reasoning with chain-of-thought. Use for: complex math, multi-step reasoning, legal/medical analysis.

Anthropic (Claude Family)

Claude Sonnet 4 ($3/1M input): Best at long-form writing, nuanced analysis, and following complex instructions. 200K context window. Use for: document analysis, legal review, creative writing.

Claude Haiku ($0.25/1M input): Fast and cheap. Use for: real-time chat, quick translations, code completion.

Claude Opus ($15/1M input): Deep analysis with citation support. Use for: research, strategy, audit reports.

Google (Gemini Family)

Gemini 2.5 Pro ($3.50/1M input): Excellent at multimodal tasks (image+text). 1M context window — the largest available. Use for: video analysis, large document processing, image understanding.

Gemini 2.5 Flash ($0.40/1M input): Fastest inference of any major model. Use for: real-time applications, streaming responses, high-throughput pipelines.

DeepSeek

DeepSeek-V3 ($0.27/1M input): Best cost-to-quality ratio. Strong at coding (HumanEval 92%), math, and multilingual tasks (supports 20+ languages natively). Use for: cost-sensitive workloads, multilingual apps, batch processing.

The SmartRouter Approach

Instead of picking one model, use SmartRouter to route automatically. It selects the best model for each request based on task type, cost, and availability. One API key, all models: https://smartrouter.online