LiteLLM vs OpenRouter
Both are llm gateways tools. Here is how they actually differ on price, billing model and deployment.
LiteLLM
The most widely adopted open-source LLM gateway, MIT licensed with 100+ provider integrations and zero markup on your tokens. The catch is that you operate it, and published enterprise pricing is wildly inconsistent.
OpenRouter
A managed gateway to 500+ models with no subscription, charging 5.5% on top of provider prices. Two details to know - there are no volume discounts, and your credits expire after a year of non-use.
| LiteLLM | OpenRouter | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | LLM Gateways | LLM Gateways |
| Our rating | 5/5 | 4/5 |
| Starting price | $0 self-hosted | 5.5% markup |
| Billing meter | No usage metering | markup-pct |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free self-hosting | Yes, free | No or paid tier only |
| Best for | Teams with engineering capacity that want provider-agnostic routing with no per-token markup, particularly at volumes where a percentage fee on a managed gateway becomes significant. | 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. |
Our verdict on LiteLLM
LiteLLM is the default open-source LLM gateway and deserves to be. It is MIT licensed, fronts 100+ providers behind an OpenAI-compatible endpoint, and takes no markup on your tokens - which is the decisive difference at any real volume, because managed alternatives charge a percentage of everything you spend forever. Adopting it is largely a base URL change, and so is leaving, which is an unusually honest position for infrastructure to be in. The cost is operational rather than financial. You run the proxy, the database, the monitoring and the upgrades, which realistically means a few hundred dollars a month of infrastructure and a person who owns it. Releases are frequent enough that pinning to stable versions is advisable. The one genuinely unsatisfying part is enterprise pricing, where third-party sources disagree so wildly - from $250 a month to around $30,000 a year - that none of them can be trusted, and enterprise SSO being free only up to five users means identity management turns into a commercial conversation sooner than you might expect.
Full LiteLLM review →Our verdict on OpenRouter
OpenRouter is the fastest way to get access to a very large number of models, and for small teams it is close to unbeatable on convenience. One key, one OpenAI-compatible endpoint, 500+ models, no subscription, and 27 community-subsidised models that are genuinely free. If you are evaluating which model suits a problem, the ability to switch between hundreds by changing a string is worth real money in engineering time alone. The economics turn against you as you grow, and the reason is structural. The 5.5% markup carries no volume discounts, so the fee scales indefinitely with your spend while delivering nothing additional - at $50,000 a month that is $2,750 every month for the same service you got at $1,000. Two smaller details are worth knowing. Credits expire after one year of non-use, which is unusual enough to catch people out. And there is no self-hosted option, so their availability is your availability, with no fallback you control.
Full OpenRouter review →Frequently Asked Questions
What is the main difference between LiteLLM and OpenRouter?
LiteLLM: Teams with engineering capacity that want provider-agnostic routing with no per-token markup, particularly at volumes where a percentage fee on a managed gateway becomes significant. OpenRouter: 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. Both sit in LLM Gateways, so the decision usually comes down to billing model and deployment rather than raw capability.
Which is cheaper, LiteLLM or OpenRouter?
It depends entirely on your workload shape, because they meter differently - LiteLLM bills on no usage metering and OpenRouter bills on markup-pct. Published starting prices are $0 self-hosted and 5.5% markup respectively, but those numbers are not comparable until you apply them to the same traffic. Use our cost calculator to model both against your own request volume and span count.
Can I self-host LiteLLM or OpenRouter?
LiteLLM: Yes, free. OpenRouter: No or paid tier only. Free self-hosting means no licence fee, not no cost - you still own the infrastructure, upgrades and on-call.