The decision to test
Separate easy and hard requests in the evaluation. A reasoning model may be useful for the difficult subset while a general-purpose model handles routine generation. Validate any routing rule with real errors.
Three criteria for this comparison
- Accuracy on reasoning-heavy cases
- Length and cost of complete output
- Latency on easy tasks as well as hard ones
Run a fair comparison
Use the same representative inputs and a written answer rubric. Pin the model version and record the endpoint, thinking configuration, quantization when known, context length, output allowance and concurrency. Preserve native request differences in an adapter rather than silently dropping fields.
Measure full request time, error rate and reported usage. For tools, validate arguments and score the result after execution. For images, preserve resolution and preprocessing. A valid response format alone does not establish a correct answer.
Compare cost per accepted result
Calculate input cost plus all billed output, including reasoning where the provider counts it. Add retries and discarded answers. Divide the total by the number of results that pass your quality criteria. Keep API usage cost separate from deployment and engineering cost.
Estimate token costs with the API calculator →