ShareAI Automatic Failover: Same-Model Routing + BYOI for Zero-Downtime AI

When an AI provider blips, your users shouldn’t. ShareAI automatic failover keeps requests flowing by routing to the same model across multiple providers—so the experience stays consistent and you don’t ship emergency patches. You can also BYOI (Bring Your Own Infrastructure) to run private endpoints as your default or as a private fallback tier.

Why outages hurt (and why single-provider = single point of failure)

Real incident patterns

Outages rarely take everything down. More often it’s model-specific hiccups, rate-limit bursts, regional brownouts, or maintenance windows. If your stack is welded to a single API, these become user-visible bugs.

The hidden cost of “retry and pray”

Retries without routing just spike latency, drain quotas, and increase abandonment. The business cost shows up in SLAs, churn, and support load.

What “same-model failover” means with ShareAI

Model-equivalent routing

If model-x at Provider A starts failing, ShareAI routes to the same model (or closest equivalent) at Provider B—with guardrails to keep behavior consistent. This turns downtime into a routing decision, not a product outage.

Invisible to end users and product code

Your integration calls a single endpoint. Failover happens in the control plane—no feature flags, no emergency redeploys for your app.

Policy knobs that fit your goals

Set per-endpoint policies like prefer latency, prefer cost, or strict provider order. You decide how aggressively to fail over—and to whom.

Two ways to use ShareAI in production

Default orchestration layer (always-on multi-provider)

Send every request via ShareAI. You get health checks, same-model routing, and provider A/B testing out of the box. Explore the Model Marketplace to pick your primaries and backups: Browse Models

Drop-in safety net (incident-only)

Keep your current SDKs, but wire ShareAI as a fallback path. When your primary fails, switch traffic automatically to ShareAI without user-visible disruption.

Per-feature routing

Example: Chat uses Provider X by default; embeddings use Provider Y for price; both have automatic failover to backups.

BYOI (Bring Your Own Infrastructure) with ShareAI

Plug in private inference

Connect self-hosted endpoints (VPC, on-prem, partner POPs). Use BYOI as primary capacity or as a private fallback tier that only your org can see. Start from the Provider Guide and Dashboard: Provider Guide • Provider Dashboard

Keys, quotas, traffic split

Attach multiple API keys (and providers) per model; define quotas and traffic share by environment/team.

Regions & data residency

Pin traffic to allowed geographies or request new ones via Geolocation Settings to meet compliance and latency goals: Geolocation Settings

How automatic failover works (under the hood)

Health & latency probes

ShareAI continuously checks provider/model/region health and latency. Thresholds trip circuit breakers that shift traffic instantly.

Model-equivalence map

A curated map aligns model IDs across providers (and grades “closest equivalents”) so failover preserves instruction-following behavior, tokenization quirks, and context limits as tightly as possible.

Safe retries by design

Idempotency keys and exponential backoff avoid duplicate work while minimizing tail latency.

Observability

You’ll see traces, failover reasons, and cost/latency deltas in Console and logs. Read the Docs when you’re ready for deeper instrumentation: Documentation Home

Quick start: make your first resilient request

5-step setup

1. Sign in and create an API key. Sign in or Sign up • Create API Key
2. Choose a primary provider per model in Console.
3. Add backup providers (and optional BYOI endpoints).
4. Enable Same-Model Routing and define fallback policy (latency/cost/order).
5. Send your first request (below) and simulate an incident to watch automatic failover.

Code: one request, automatic provider failover

JavaScript (fetch)

const res = await fetch("https://api.shareai.now/v1/chat/completions", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.SHAREAI_API_KEY}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    // Pick your canonical model; ShareAI routes to same/closest across providers
    model: "gpt-4.1-mini",
    messages: [
      {
        role: "user",
        content: "Summarize the key risks of single-provider AI.",
      },
    ],
    // Optional routing preferences per request:
    // routing: { policy: "prefer_latency" }  // or prefer_cost, provider_order
  }),
});

const data = await res.json();
console.log(data);

Python (requests)

import os
import json
import requests

api_key = os.getenv("SHAREAI_API_KEY")
url = "https://api.shareai.now/v1/chat/completions"

payload = {
    "model": "gpt-4.1-mini",
    "messages": [
        {"role": "user", "content": "Draft a status note for an AI provider incident."}
    ],
}

headers = {
    "Authorization": f"Bearer {api_key}",
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
}

resp = requests.post(url, headers=headers, json=payload)

print(resp.status_code)
print(resp.json())

Want a deeper walkthrough? Start with the API Reference quickstart: API Reference. Or try it live in the Playground (great for verifying failover policies without writing code): Open Playground

Keep experiences smooth during incidents

Smart timeouts & partial responses

Fail fast from failing providers; stream partial results if your UX supports it, then complete from a fallback.

Cache common prompts

Cache static prompts (FAQ, boilerplate system prompts) to serve instantly during incidents.

Queue & batch non-urgent work

Batch heavy jobs (e.g., summarization) to resume as soon as healthy capacity is back—without dropping tasks.

Transparent comms

Add an in-app banner tied to provider status and your own routing state. Point readers to your Releases/Changelog when behavior changes: See Releases

Control spend while staying online

Cost ceilings & fallback order

Set a max multiplier for backups (e.g., “≤1.2× primary CPM”). If a backup exceeds it, route to the next best fit.

Per-team budgets & alerts

Apply budgets per workspace/project; alert on failover spikes so finance isn’t surprised.

Post-incident reports

Review how much traffic failed over, why, and the cost/latency deltas to refine policy.

Security & compliance, even across providers

Regional pinning: keep data in-region when required. Zero-retention modes: disable request logging where needed. Auditability: export logs and traces for regulated environments. For provider geographies and controls, see Geolocation Settings in Console: Allowed Locations

FAQ

Can I force ShareAI to stick to an exact model ID?

Yes—lock to a specific provider+model ID. Or allow closest-equivalent failover when exact twins aren’t available.

What if no exact twins exist?

Use the closest-equivalent policy to choose the nearest model by capability, context size, and cost. You control whether to degrade gracefully or fail closed.

How do I test failover without taking production down?

Use the Playground or a staging key to simulate provider failure (e.g., blocklist one provider temporarily) and inspect traces: Playground

Does BYOI require public ingress?

No. You can run private/VPC endpoints and register them as providers visible only to your org. Start with the Provider Guide: Provider Guide

Conclusion

Outages are inevitable. With ShareAI automatic failover and BYOI, they don’t have to be disruptive. Route to the same model across providers, keep SLAs intact, and control cost and compliance—all without changing your app code. When a provider fails, ShareAI keeps you online.