AI Gateway

An AI gateway is a control layer that routes, governs, and observes every model call and tool call through one API. This guide explains how an AI gateway works, how it differs from API, LLM, and MCP gateways, and how to evaluate one for production.

The best LLM gateway for cost control enforces budgets and rate limits before a request reaches a provider, then alerts as spend nears a cap. This roundup compares Bifrost, LiteLLM, Cloudflare AI Gateway, Kong, and OpenRouter on budget hierarchy, alerting, and deployment.

LLM monitoring tools at the gateway layer record tokens, cost, latency, and status for each model call as it passes through the request path. This guide compares Bifrost, Kong AI Gateway, LiteLLM, Cloudflare AI Gateway, and Envoy AI Gateway on capture, export, retention, and budget alerting.

An OpenAI-compatible API lets any OpenAI SDK client reach many model providers by changing only the base URL. This guide compares Bifrost, LiteLLM, Kong AI Gateway, Cloudflare AI Gateway, and OpenRouter on endpoints, deployment, failover, and governance.

An agent gateway governs the traffic AI agents produce: model calls, tool calls, and messages to other agents. This guide explains how to choose one and compares Bifrost, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Gateway, Google Cloud Agent Gateway, Kong AI Gateway, and Azure API Management.

A LiteLLM alternative is a gateway or router that replaces LiteLLM's proxy for multi-provider LLM access. This guide gives a decision framework and compares Bifrost, Kong AI Gateway, Cloudflare AI Gateway, Vercel AI Gateway, and OpenRouter.