GateLLM vs the alternatives
A source-verified comparison library. Every page lists what only GateLLM does, what both do, and what differs in kind — so you can weigh the trade-offs on facts, not marketing.
Choosing an AI gateway is a procurement decision, not a developer decision. Five criteria separate the field: where it runs, what the bill anchors on, which SDKs it speaks natively, how finely you can govern it, and whether the vendor will still own it next year.
Eight gateways, five criteria
Each cell is a one-line read of the matching comparison page — the cards below link to the full mechanism-level breakdown and migration path.
| Criterion | LiteLLM | OpenRouter | Alibaba Cloud AI Gateway | Azure API Management | Apigee | Cloudflare AI Gateway | Kong AI Gateway | Portkey (Prisma AIRS) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deployment | Self-hosted OSS | SaaS only | Managed cloud (Higress) | Managed or self-hosted, Azure-attached | Data plane on your K8s, control plane on GCP | Managed edge | Self-hosted OSS (+ managed Konnect) | Hybrid: gateway self-hosted, control plane SaaS |
| Billing anchor | Free OSS; Enterprise usage-priced | Token pass-through + credit/BYOK fees | Usage-priced managed service | Azure subscription (gateway + control plane) | Usage-priced, GCP control plane | 5% fee on unified-billing credits | Free OSS; Enterprise-gated plugins | $49/mo + $9 per 100k recorded logs |
| Protocol entrypoints | OpenAI-centric | OpenAI-compatible | OpenAI-compatible | General API gateway + AI policies | General API gateway + AI policies | OpenAI-compatible edge | OpenAI-compatible + AI plugins | OpenAI-compatible |
| Governance | SSO (5-user cap) / RBAC in Enterprise | Per-key controls, no org RBAC | Cloud IAM + gateway policies | Azure RBAC + policies | GCP IAM + API policies | Cloudflare access + gateway policies | RBAC / SSO in Enterprise | RBAC / SSO / SCIM / guardrails |
| Vendor independence | Independent (BerriAI) | Independent (Series B) | Alibaba Cloud (in-house) | Microsoft (in-house) | Google Cloud (in-house) | Cloudflare (in-house) | Independent (Kong Inc.) | Acquired by Palo Alto Networks (2026-05-29) |
Honest bar: you may not need a gateway at all
Single provider, single team, no compliance constraint, manageable monthly spend — call the provider APIs directly and skip the gateway. A gateway starts paying for itself when you need multi-provider failover, per-team cost attribution, compliance / data residency, or real-time visibility into runaway spend.
Third-party head-to-heads
Comparisons where the question is not "why GateLLM" but "which of these two should I pick". Same source-verified matrix, a third column, and an honest answer when neither is the right choice.