Llm gateway vs router
A router selects a model or provider. A gateway can additionally manage access, budgets and observability. Separate model-selection quality from the reliability of the shared request boundary.
Evaluate on your own workload
- Choose representative requests and define acceptable answers.
- Record input/output tokens, latency, errors and fallback attempts.
- Compare total monthly cost and operational requirements.
- Run a small controlled rollout with a rollback path.
No savings, compliance status or provider compatibility is guaranteed by this guide.
Published vendor prices
USD; offers and taxes may vary. Model usage and hosting can be separate costs.
| Vendor | Plan and billing | Source and checked date |
|---|---|---|
| OpenRouter | Standard: 5.5% credit-purchase fee plus model usage | Vendor source · |
| Portkey | Developer free; Production $49/month | Vendor source · |
| LiteLLM | Open-source self-hosting; infrastructure and model usage extra | Vendor source · |
| Cloudflare AI Gateway | Core features free; unified billing has a 5% credit-purchase fee | Vendor source · |
Gateway documentation and current plan ladder · Estimate monthly model costs