Finest vs Martian
Last updated 2026-08-19
Martian is a model router: it predicts, per request, which model will perform well enough and routes there, selling cost reduction at comparable quality. Finest pursues the same outcome with a different contract: substitutions are authorized only by sealed, versioned evidence for the task class, your requested model serves verbatim otherwise, every request carries a verifiable receipt, and the fee is 25% of the savings those receipts prove. Prediction says a cheaper model should work. Evidence shows where it did.
| At a glance | Finest | Martian |
|---|---|---|
| Routing basis | Sealed evidence per task class, published | Learned per-prompt performance prediction |
| Default behavior | Your requested model, served verbatim, unless sealed evidence authorizes better. | Router chooses per prompt |
| Fee model | No model markup. 25% of proven savings per request. No saving, no fee. | Platform pricing |
| When unproven | Serve the requested model verbatim | Router still predicts and picks |
| Proof of value | A receipt per request: model served, evidence, saving. | Reported savings and benchmarks |
| Adoption | Base URL and key, self-serve | Router integration |
Choose Finest when
- Procurement or engineering will ask "prove it," and you want artifacts rather than benchmarks as the answer.
- You want unproven traffic left exactly as you wrote it, not routed on a prediction.
- You want to pay a share of demonstrated savings instead of paying for routing itself.
Choose Martian when
- You want per-prompt adaptivity everywhere immediately, including on traffic no one has measured.
- You are comfortable trusting a learned router's judgment across your workload.
- You want a vendor focused on routing research and custom enterprise engagements.
Prediction and proof are different products
A learned router generalizes: it has seen many prompts and predicts which model clears the bar for yours. When it is right, you save. When it is wrong, you find out downstream, and the router's confidence was never something you could audit in advance.
Finest refuses that trade, and the refusal is published: The Request Compiler (Finest Research, August 2026) describes the evidence ladder a plan climbs before it may serve, from observation through shadow comparison to a sealed confirmation and a sticky canary. A configuration may serve a task class only after clearing a pre-registered bar on a sealed corpus, with the record published and the bound stated. Requests outside proven classes serve your requested model verbatim. Coverage grows at the speed of evidence, and every step of it is inspectable, which is precisely what makes a savings-contingent fee possible.
Compare the worst cases
The honest way to compare routers is not best-case savings but worst-case behavior. Finest's worst case is your exact request served at the host's list rate with no fee. A prediction-based router's worst case is a misrouted request you discover in production. Which worst case a team can live with is usually the real decision.
Questions people ask
- Is Finest a model router like Martian?
- Both route to cut cost. Finest routes only inside published evidence and serves the requested model verbatim everywhere else; the fee exists only as a share of savings its receipts prove.
- What does Finest do on traffic it has not measured?
- It serves exactly what you asked for, at the host's rate, with no markup and no fee. Unproven traffic is never an experiment.
- Can I verify a routing decision after the fact?
- Yes. The receipt names the configuration, the evidence bar, and the saving, and finest.so/verification resolves it.
In 2 minutes, start cutting your API spend without sacrificing quality. Free if you don’t save money.
No model markup. You pay the host’s rate. 25% of what it proves it saved on a request. No saving, no fee.