I Compared 5 LLM Gateway Tools for Real-World Production Use
When an LLM application starts handling real users, calling a model API is usually easy. The problems show up around it. One provider hits a rate limit, another slows down, an endpoint goes down, retries drive up costs, or the application needs to switch models without rewriting half the codebase. This is where an LLM gateway becomes useful. It sits between your application and model providers,…
An LLM gateway is a software layer that acts as a traffic controller for AI requests between an application and one or more large language model providers. It helps manage complexities such as rate limits, latency, provider failures, and operational control. This article compares five popular LLM gateway tools: LiteLLM, Kong AI Gateway, Portkey, Bifrost, and Apache APISIX, to understand how they handle important aspects like provider abstraction, routing and load balancing, reliability and fallbacks, observability, and operational control.
The comparison aims to help developers determine which gateway best fits their production needs based on factors like the number of providers, traffic volume, reliability requirements, and existing infrastructure.
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