LiteLLM Alternatives
LiteLLM starts at $0 self-hosted. Here are the llm gateways tools worth weighing against it, and how they differ on billing and deployment.
- 1
Teams already on Cloudflare who want caching, rate limiting and cost visibility at the edge with no markup, and who have separate tooling for evaluation.
From $0 Bills records - 2
Teams already running a gateway who want smarter per-request model selection without putting another vendor in the request path, particularly for coding agents where model spend is high and uncontrolled.
From Conflicting reports - 3
Small teams and prototypes trying many models without wanting infrastructure, and anyone whose monthly provider spend stays below roughly $5,000 where the markup costs less than running a gateway.
From 5.5% markup Bills markup-pcts - 4
Teams that want one gateway to route, cache, budget and guardrail across many LLM providers, and are fine paying for the managed tier once they need real observability
From $49/mo Self-hosts free - 5
Enterprises that need an AI gateway deployable on-premise or in their own cloud with governance features, and that want a managed product rather than operating open-source infrastructure.
From $499/mo Bills requests - 6
Teams already deploying on Vercel who want provider-agnostic model access at list price with no markup, and who do not need governance features that carry a per-request charge.
From $0 plus provider list price - 7
Organisations already standardised on Kong for API management, where bringing LLM traffic under existing governance matters more than LLM-specific features.
From Around $500/mo (Konnect) Self-hosts free - 8
Teams doing serious, reproducible model evaluation - safety testing, capability benchmarking, agent evaluation, or anything where the result has to withstand scrutiny. Also the right choice for anyone publishing evaluation results.
From $0 (open source) Self-hosts free
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do people look for LiteLLM alternatives?
Usually pricing model or deployment. LiteLLM starts at $0 self-hosted. Teams also switch when they need free self-hosting, which LiteLLM does offer.
What is the closest free alternative to LiteLLM?
Portkey is the strongest option that self-hosts free - Teams that want one gateway to route, cache, budget and guardrail across many LLM providers, and are fine paying for the managed tier once they need real observability Free on licence is not free to operate though; you still own the infrastructure and the on-call.
How should I compare the costs?
Not by their published prices, because tools in this category meter different things - spans, events, GB ingested, seats, prompts, or a percentage of provider spend. A $50 plan means something completely different in each case. Model your own request volume and span count through the cost calculator instead.