An apparatus comprises a host device configured to communicate over a network with a storage system. The host device comprises a multipath input-output driver configured to control delivery of input-output operations from the host device to the storage system over selected ones of a plurality of paths through the network. The input-output operations being generated by a plurality of applications of the host device and the multipath input-output driver having a plurality of dispatch resources. The host device is further configured to establish a plurality of application buckets for respective different application priority levels; and to allocate one or more dispatch resources to one or more of the plurality of applications depending upon the respective different application priority levels. In addition, the host device is configured to assign different ones of the applications of the host device to different ones of the application buckets. For a given one of the input-output operations, the host device is further configured to identify its corresponding one of the application buckets and utilize one or more of the allocated dispatch resources of the corresponding application bucket to control delivery of the given input-output operation to the storage system.