Factory Router

4 min read Original article ↗

Frontier performance at lower cost

Automatic model selection for every Droid session. Factory Router picks the right model for each task, maintains frontier performance, and cuts cost by up to 25%.

$ droid --model router "refactor auth middleware"

Refactor auth middleware to use JWT validationDroid is routing…

Auto-ModelAuto HighNormal ModeMCP (3)Skills (12)

router-classifierclassifier · ~2s

Reads the first user message, recent tool calls and repo signals, then emits a scalar quality probability for each model.

message0.300.84

recent tools0.200.62

repo size0.150.77

language mix0.200.91

difficulty0.150.88

Final Score0.80

candidate scoringthreshold 0.70

sorted cheapest → most expensivequality_threshold

Kimi K2.6Moonshot$0.81

MiniMax-M2.7MiniMax$$0.88

Claude Opus 4.7Anthropic$$$0.95

Kimi K2.6

streaming

›Reading src/auth/middleware.ts...

›Found legacy session cookie validation

›Replacing with JWT verify (RS256)

›Generated 7 tests covering edge cases

›PR #418 opened — ready for review

AI coding costs are rising across organizations.

Enterprise AI costs are climbing, and a bigger token bill does not mean more work is getting done. To avoid losing on performance, engineers usually default to the most performant model for all tasks. Simple questions, mechanical refactors, documentation updates, small bug fixes, and search-heavy investigations end up on the same premium path as work that truly needs frontier performance. Budgets get exhausted without a clear increase in organization-level output.

Stop choosing a model for every task.

Today you pick a model per task and lean on the most expensive one to be safe. With Factory Router you choose once and it picks the best model for each session.

Same prompts. Different cost.

Without RoutingAlways Claude Opus 4.7

“reset my password”Claude Opus 4.7$0.00

“add a copyright header”Claude Opus 4.7$0.00

“design a caching layer”Claude Opus 4.7$0.00

With Factory RouterRouted per task

“reset my password”Kimi K2.6$0.00

“add a copyright header”MiniMax-M2.7$0.00

“design a caching layer”Kimi K2.6$0.00

Savings on identical work0%

On our enterprise engineering benchmarks.

Compared with Claude Opus 4.7, Factory Router maintains frontier performance at lower cost per session. At enterprise scale, those savings apply across every Droid session, with spend tied to the work being done rather than a blanket default to the most expensive model.

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TERMINAL-BENCH 2PASS RATE · vs OPUS 4.70%of Claude Opus 4.7 pass rateCOST PER SESSION · vs OPUS 4.70%lowerFactory Router runs at 80% of Opus costCost per successful run · 80.5% of OpusLEGACY-BENCHPASS RATE · vs OPUS 4.70%of Claude Opus 4.7 pass rateCOST PER SESSION · vs OPUS 4.70%lowerFactory Router runs at 75% of Opus costCost per successful run · 78.0% of OpusReported relative to Claude Opus 4.7 · cost measured as full-session cost · averaged across multiple runs

Reliability you can count on.

When a provider degrades, rate limits hit, or capacity gets constrained, your sessions keep going. Factory Router routes across models, providers, and capacity to deliver 99.9%+ request reliability.

Claude Opus 4.7Bedrock· degraded

Claude Opus 4.7Vertex· healthy

Routing that reflects how your organization works.

Routing guidance brings your team's context into Factory Router, so automatic model selection reflects how work actually happens inside your organization. The same policy surfaces that govern other Factory models apply here, so admins manage access, compliance, and eligibility without a separate control plane.

Admin routing guidance

Automatic model selection for every Droid sessionEnabled org-wide

Routing rules & context

— Routine refactors, formatting, and doc updates → favor cost-efficient models— auth/ and payments/ need deeper reasoning → keep on frontier models— Search-heavy investigation → route to open-source models

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Use Factory Router in the Factory CLI and Desktop App.

Factory Router is in private research preview in the Factory CLI and Desktop App. Once enabled for your org, it appears in the model picker for every user with no setup required. Mission workers can use it too, so long-running autonomous work gets the same automatic model selection and savings as interactive and headless sessions.