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Available on all Portkey plans.
Circuit breakers prevent cascading failures by temporarily blocking requests to targets that are failing.

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Config Schema

FieldDescription
failure_thresholdNumber of failures to open circuit
failure_threshold_percentagePercentage failure rate to trip circuit (optional)
cooldown_intervalMilliseconds to wait before retrying (min: 30s)
failure_status_codesHTTP codes considered failures (optional, default: >500)
minimum_requestsRequests required before evaluating failure rate (optional)
  • Strategies inherit cb_config from parent if not set
  • Targets inherit from their parent strategy
conditional mode strategies are not evaluated by circuit breaker.

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Example

{
  "strategy": {
    "mode": "fallback",
    "cb_config": {
      "failure_threshold_percentage": 20,
      "minimum_requests": 10,
      "cooldown_interval": 60000,
      "failure_status_codes": [401, 429, 500]
    }
  },
  "targets": [
    { "override_params": { "model": "@openai-prod/gpt-4o" } },
    { "override_params": { "model": "@anthropic-prod/claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022" } }
  ]
}
The @provider-slug/model-name format automatically routes to the correct provider. Set up providers in Model Catalog.

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How It Works

Circuit breaker tracks per strategy path:
  • Failure and success counts
  • Time of first failure
  • Failure rate (when minimum_requests threshold met)
Circuit opens (OPEN) when:
  • Failure count exceeds failure_threshold, or
  • Failure rate exceeds failure_threshold_percentage
Circuit closes (CLOSED) automatically after cooldown_interval passes.

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Runtime Behavior

  • Unhealthy targets removed from routing
  • If all targets are OPEN, circuit breaker is bypassed
Last modified on February 9, 2026