LiteLLM
Open-source proxy gateway exposing 100+ LLM vendors through one OpenAI-compatible API—routing, budgets, fallbacks, and logging without reinventing plumbing.
Best for
Teams routing between multiple LLM vendors with unified billing, auditing, and gradual rollouts—a common enterprise AI gateway.
Less ideal when
Single-vendor setups, or teams wanting zero self-hosted middleware.
When comparing
Vs OpenRouter / Portkey / Braintrust Proxy: LiteLLM is OSS-flexible with broad ecosystem; OpenRouter is consumer-grade routing; Portkey leans into guardrails and caching.
Quick checklist
- Design API key / multi-tenant isolation and auditing
- Define rate limits and fallback policies
- Monitor per-model cost/latency baselines
- Size self-hosted deployment or LiteLLM Cloud capacity
Search-driven Q&A
LiteLLM vs OpenRouter—how to choose?
LiteLLM acts like an internal AI gateway in your VPC with policy/audit depth; OpenRouter is a consumer-friendly model marketplace. Many teams combine both—OpenRouter as catalog, LiteLLM as governance layer.
When to use it
The summary should help you decide if this tool fits your needs. When many options look similar, consider how often you’ll use it, budget, and data privacy before choosing one.