> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://neuraltrust-92b43583-develop.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Load balancing

> Distribute traffic across a consumer's registries from the console — smart routing, round-robin, weighted, least-connections, or random.

When a [consumer](/trustgate/concepts/consumers) can reach more than one
[registry](/trustgate/concepts/registries), load balancing picks which one serves each
request. Configure it on the consumer under **Routing** → **Strategy** → **Load balancing**.

## Strategies

| Strategy in the UI                                    | How it picks                                                                                                                            |
| ----------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **[Smart routing](/trustgate/routing/smart-routing)** | Routes by prompt complexity across **Simple** / **Medium** / **Hard** tiers (registry + model per label). Recommended multi-model path. |
| **Round robin**                                       | Cycles evenly across pool members.                                                                                                      |
| **Weighted**                                          | Sends more traffic to members with higher weights.                                                                                      |
| **Least connections**                                 | Prefers the member with the fewest in-flight requests.                                                                                  |
| **Random**                                            | Uniform random pick.                                                                                                                    |

**Simple routing** and **Fallback** live under the **Direct** group in the same Strategy
dropdown — they are not load-balancing algorithms. Details for label-based complexity routing
are on the [Smart routing](/trustgate/routing/smart-routing) page.

## Configure load balancing

1. Open **Consumers** → select a consumer → **Routing**.
2. Set **Routing mode** to **Static**.
3. Open **Strategy** and choose an algorithm under **Load balancing**.
4. Add pool members (registries / models). For **Weighted**, set each member's weight.
5. For **Smart routing**, configure **Complexity tiers** (at least two) — see
   [Smart routing](/trustgate/routing/smart-routing).
6. Save.

Connect snippets for load-balanced consumers use `"model": "auto"` so clients do not need
to name a model — see [Model resolution](/trustgate/routing/model-resolution).

## Weights

For **Weighted**, each pool member carries a weight from **1 to 100**. A member at 70
receives roughly 70% of the share of one at 30. Set weights in the registry / member rows
in the Routing editor.

## Health checks

LLM registries can define health checks in the Registry editor. Unhealthy registries are
skipped by the load balancer until they recover.

Pair load balancing with [fallback](/trustgate/routing/fallback) so a failed pick can retry
another path instead of erroring immediately.