LLM Gateway Comparison — Proxy Your AI Requests

What it is

This comparison covers the leading LLM gateway and proxy tools that sit between your application and LLM providers. Gateways like LiteLLM, Portkey, OpenRouter, and Bifrost provide a unified API, automatic failover, cost tracking, and request routing across multiple AI providers.

The comparison helps engineering teams choose the right gateway for their needs -- whether that is cost optimization, high availability, or provider flexibility.

How it saves time or tokens

Without a gateway, switching between OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google requires rewriting API calls for each provider. An LLM gateway provides a single endpoint with automatic failover, so provider outages do not break your application. Cost tracking and rate-limit management across providers are built in.

How to use

1. Choose a gateway based on your priorities: self-hosted (LiteLLM), managed (Portkey, OpenRouter), or performance-first (Bifrost).
2. Replace your direct provider API calls with the gateway's unified endpoint.
3. Configure routing rules, fallbacks, and cost budgets in the gateway dashboard or config file.

Example

# LiteLLM: unified API for 100+ LLM providers
import litellm

# Same function call, different providers
response = litellm.completion(
    model='gpt-4o',
    messages=[{'role': 'user', 'content': 'Hello'}]
)

# Switch to Claude with one line change
response = litellm.completion(
    model='claude-sonnet-4-20250514',
    messages=[{'role': 'user', 'content': 'Hello'}]
)

# Automatic fallback chain
response = litellm.completion(
    model='gpt-4o',
    fallbacks=['claude-sonnet-4-20250514', 'gemini-pro'],
    messages=[{'role': 'user', 'content': 'Hello'}]
)

Related on TokRepo

• AI Gateway Providers -- detailed comparisons of gateway and proxy services
• LiteLLM Deep-Dive -- self-hosted LLM proxy with 100+ provider support

Common pitfalls

• Gateway latency adds 10-50ms per request. For latency-sensitive applications, benchmark the gateway overhead against your SLA requirements.
• Not all gateways support streaming for every provider. Verify streaming compatibility before deploying to production.
• Cost tracking accuracy depends on the gateway correctly mapping token counts. Cross-check gateway cost reports against provider invoices monthly.