Skip to main content
The :floor variant optimizes for cost. When you use :floor, OpenRouter sorts the model’s providers by price and also makes flex service tier endpoints eligible, so a provider’s discounted flex tier can serve the request when it is the cheapest option.

​
Usage

Append :floor to any model ID:

​
How it works

:floor does two things:
  1. Sorts all eligible endpoints by price, the same effect as setting provider.sort to "price".
  2. Admits flex service tier endpoints into the eligible pool. Unlike the service_tier: "flex" parameter, which tries flex endpoints first and only falls back to endpoints priced at or below a flex endpoint on both input and output, :floor gives flex endpoints no preference: they simply compete on price with the whole pool. Since flex pricing is discounted, flex endpoints tend to sort first, with regular endpoints as the next-cheapest fallback if a flex endpoint is unavailable.
Billing follows the tier the provider actually serves: a request served on the flex tier is billed at the flex rate, and if the provider serves it on the default tier instead, you’re billed the default rate. See Service Tiers for the full comparison of tier-selection options. If you want price sorting without flex tier eligibility, set provider.sort to "price" instead of using :floor.