Open source alternative to Portkey and OpenRouter
Last verified
Run a self-hosted AI gateway that routes 100+ LLM providers through one OpenAI-format API, with virtual keys, spend tracking, and fallbacks.
Run the proxy once, issue virtual keys per team with budgets, and let every developer use their usual OpenAI client against one endpoint.
You are a single developer calling one provider, where the provider's own SDK is simpler.
Use the SDK and Router to spread traffic across deployments and fail over automatically when a provider rate limits or errors.
Your application will only ever use a single model from a single provider.
Point agents and editors at the gateway so model calls and MCP tool access share one set of keys, logs, and budgets.
You do not want to operate any infrastructure and prefer a managed service.
Calling several LLM providers means juggling different SDKs, authentication schemes, request formats, and error types. Once more than one team shares those models, the harder questions arrive: who holds the provider keys, who is allowed to call which model, what each team spent, and what happens when a provider rate limits or goes down. Hosted gateways answer those questions by sitting between your traffic and the providers. If you would rather keep keys, logs, and routing rules on your own infrastructure, you need a gateway you can run yourself.
Call OpenAI, Anthropic, Vertex AI, Bedrock, Azure, Ollama, and many more through the same completion() call. Responses follow the OpenAI Chat Completions format, and provider errors map to OpenAI exception types.
Spread requests across multiple deployments and set automatic fallbacks, so one rate-limited or failing deployment does not take your application down.
The proxy is an OpenAI-compatible gateway. Issue virtual keys with per-key, team, and user budgets and rate limits, and track spend across every provider in one place.
Add content filtering, PII masking, and safety checks at the gateway, cache responses, and send input and output to observability tools such as Langfuse, MLflow, and Helicone.
Expose MCP servers through a central endpoint with per-key access control, and add A2A agents to the same gateway, so models, tools, and agents share one entry point.
Portkey is a commercial AI gateway. LiteLLM covers similar ground in an open source package that you host: a unified OpenAI-format API, virtual keys with budgets, guardrails, caching, load balancing, and observability callbacks. The practical difference is where it runs. With LiteLLM, the proxy and its logs live on your infrastructure and you carry the operational work. Check Portkey's current feature list and pricing directly before deciding, since this page only describes LiteLLM from its own docs.
OpenRouter is a commercial service for reaching many models through one API. LiteLLM gives you the same single-interface idea, but you bring your own provider accounts and keys, and the gateway runs where you put it. That means you pay providers directly and keep routing rules under your control, in exchange for running the service yourself. LiteLLM also adds team budgets, an admin UI, and MCP and A2A gateways.
Choose LiteLLM when key custody, self-hosting, and per-team spend control matter more than avoiding operations work. Choose a hosted gateway when you want someone else to run the infrastructure.
Self-hosting the proxy needs Python with uv, or Docker plus a litellm_config.yaml for your models.
```bash
uv tool install 'litellm[proxy]'
litellm --model gpt-4o
docker run -v $(pwd)/litellm_config.yaml:/app/config.yaml -p 4000:4000 docker.litellm.ai/berriai/litellm:latest --config /app/config.yaml
```LiteLLM is an open source AI gateway that lets you call 100+ LLM providers using the OpenAI format. You can use it as a Python SDK inside your code or deploy the proxy server as a shared gateway for a team.
Yes. The non-enterprise portions are MIT-licensed, so you can use, modify, deploy, and redistribute them for any purpose, including commercial production use. Content under the enterprise/ directory is governed by a separate license that is not included in the repository, so review it before using that code.
Install it with uv tool install 'litellm[proxy]' and run litellm with a model, or run the Docker image with a litellm_config.yaml mounted. The proxy listens on port 4000 and accepts any OpenAI client.
Yes. The gateway can host a central MCP endpoint with per-key access control and can add A2A agents, alongside the 100+ LLM providers.
Alternative to
OpenRouter
352-provider AI gateway with automatic fallback and token compression
Alternative toOpenRouter
One OpenAI-compatible key for 635 free LLM endpoints
Alternative toOpenRouter
One API gateway for Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, and Grok subscriptions
Alternative to
Portkey
LLM proxy with API translation and multi-backend routing
Alternative toPortkey
Open-source AI gateway with 23+ providers, failover, and MCP support.
Run Litellm on your own server
Self-host Litellm on a Hostinger VPS.
Deploy on HostingerFeatured
Alternative toClaude Managed Agents
Open-source agent deployment API. Self-host or use Omnara Cloud.
Alternative to
Superhuman
AI email assistant that drafts replies and clears your inbox
Alternative to
Grok Bot
AI teammates you own: your keys, your model, your machine.
The projects we add and every new guide. Free, unsubscribe any time.
Claude Code to 
OpenCode
Jira to 
Windshift
Notion to 
AppFlowy
Slack to 
Mattermost
Linear to 
GitLab
Wispr Flow to 
Handy
CapCut to 
Concat
Grok Bot to 
rakazo
Superhuman to 
Inbox Zero
Airtable to 
AITable
Muse to 
OpenClaw
GitHub Copilot to 
Cline
Datadog to 
Netdata
Microsoft Teams to 
Rocket.Chat
Pinecone to 
Qdrant
Zapier to 
n8n
Devin AI to 
OpenHands
Firebase to 
Supabase
1Password to 
KeePassXCConfluence to 
Docmost
Contentful to 
Strapi
Adobe Premiere Pro to 
Shotcut
ChatGPT to 
AnythingLLM
LangSmith to 
Langfuse
