September 30, 2026
Weave Router cuts model costs: spending nearly halved on Terminal-Bench
In Weave's Sep 9 benchmark, Router spent 52% of Astra's budget on Terminal-Bench while achieving a similar task success rate.
Weave Router 2.0 selects a model for each step of an AI agent's work. It assigns complex debugging to Astra and simple interface changes to DeepSeek v4 Flash.
Router connects to Claude Code or Codex. No separate agent is needed to work on the project: Weave switches models within the existing tool.
Savings from switching. In version 1.0, switching models could mean paying again for the entire context without caching. Version 2.0 switches when the expected savings exceed the cost of populating another model's cache.
Weave also trained Router to consider session history before selecting a group of suitable models. For training, the team expanded its dataset of agent sessions and used an LLM to label them.
In its own benchmarks on Sep 9, Weave compared Router with GPT-6 Astra. The task success rate means success in at least one of two attempts; cost and time are given per attempt.
| Benchmark | Router | Astra | | --- | --- | --- | | Terminal-Bench 4.0, 66 tasks | 62.1% solved · $5.22 · 20.5 minutes | 60.6% solved · $10.03 · 44.1 minutes | | SWE-Atlas Codebase QnA, 124 tasks | 62.1% solved · $2.31 · 6.8 minutes | 66.1% solved · $5.04 · 16.7 minutes |
Connecting to an agent. The command `npx @weave-os/router --claude` starts setup of the hosted version for Claude Code, while `npx @weave-os/router --codex` connects Codex. The old package `@workweave/router` remains a compatible alias.
The installer requires Node ≥18, bash and jq. Windows requires Git Bash or WSL.
The command `npx @weave-os/router login claude` connects a Claude Pro/Max subscription. For ChatGPT Pro/Plus, use `npx @weave-os/router login codex`.
The command `npx @weave-os/router off --claude` disables routing for Claude Code, and `npx @weave-os/router on --claude` enables it again. Restart Claude Code after switching.
The hosted version for individual developers and startups costs 5% of spending routed through Router. To self-host, the README suggests adding `OPENROUTER_API_KEY` and `ROUTER_ADMIN_PASSWORD` to `.env.local`, then running `make full-setup`: the command starts Postgres and Router at `localhost:8080`.
Starting with router-v0.2.24, the code and both npm packages are available under Apache-2.0; earlier versions retain their original licenses.
