Dynamic LLM Routers are Often Misguided
This study reveals the failure of dynamic LLM routers in cost optimization. Through benchmarking and Pareto efficiency analysis, we demonstrate that commercial routers underperform random routing due to misaligned standard objective functions and a "difficulty blind spot," while the assumption of requiring large model pools proves invalid. To address these issues, we propose a novel evaluation framework and a dual-model routing paradigm that circumvents prevalent design pitfalls. Experimental results indicate that existing complex routing systems are broadly inefficient, whereas our streamlined dual-model architecture outperforms mainstream commercial solutions. This work establishes principled model selection strategies and provides critical theoretical and practical guidance for the design of LLM routing systems.