Routing Strategy Guide

The dashboard setting Routing strategy controls how eligible accounts are selected for each request. No strategy can guarantee account-safety outcomes; conservative use still depends on staying within OpenAI terms, using normal request volumes, and avoiding traffic patterns that would be unusual for your accounts.

For low-volume, policy-compliant personal use, start with Capacity weighted or Relative availability and keep sticky threads enabled. Those strategies preserve session locality while avoiding sudden all-traffic shifts to a single account.

Routing strategy	Behavior	Trade-offs and recommended use
Capacity weighted	Prefers accounts with more usable quota headroom.	Good default for mixed pools and normal compliant usage.
Relative availability	Draws from the strongest available accounts with configurable weighting.	Smooths distribution while still preferring healthier accounts.
Usage weighted	Reacts to observed recent usage.	Useful when usage history should influence selection, but less direct than capacity-based routing.
Round robin	Cycles evenly through eligible accounts.	Simple and predictable, but ignores quota shape and reset timing.
Fill first	Uses one account heavily before moving on.	Best for controlled drain tests; less conservative for everyday traffic.
Sequential drain	Drains accounts in a fixed order.	Useful for maintenance or explicit account rotation, not a normal safety-first default.
Reset drain	Prioritizes capacity near reset windows.	Helps consume expiring quota, but can create timing-shaped bursts.
Single account	Pins all traffic to one selected active account.	Useful for isolation and debugging; no load balancing.

Change the strategy live in the dashboard under Settings → Routing — no restart required.

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Spec: account-routing