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LiteLLM Alternatives in 2026: 10 Gateways Compared
If you are leaving LiteLLM over billing — wanting a hard ceiling rather than a bill settled afterwards — SuperbAPI is the closest fit: prepaid credit, no subscription, and a budget cap per key. If you are leaving over what LiteLLM covers, Portkey is the nearest substitute, being a layer in front of the provider accounts you hold yourself. Both, and eight more, are ranked below — with a straight account of where LiteLLM is still the better answer.
Why do people look for LiteLLM alternatives?
Operational cost. The software is free; running it is not. Somebody maintains the deployment, watches it during an incident, and keeps up with provider API changes. Teams reach for a hosted alternative when that work stops being a fair trade for the control, or when they realise they still hold every provider account underneath it.
The 10 alternatives at a glance
| # | Gateway | Billing | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SuperbAPI | Prepaid credit, no subscription | One prepaid wallet across every major model, with per-key budget caps |
| 2 | Portkey | SaaS or self-hosted; you bring provider keys | Routing, caching, guardrails and observability over your own keys |
| 3 | Helicone | Open source or cloud; you bring provider keys | Logging, tracing and cost attribution for LLM calls |
| 4 | Vercel AI Gateway | Credits or bring-your-own-key, inside the Vercel platform | Teams already deploying on Vercel and using the AI SDK |
| 5 | Cloudflare AI Gateway | Platform feature; you bring provider keys | Caching, rate limiting and analytics at the edge, over your own keys |
| 6 | OpenRouter | Credits, plus bring-your-own-key | The widest model catalogue behind a single OpenAI-compatible key |
| 7 | Together AI | Postpaid, pay-as-you-go | Open-weight inference and fine-tuning at serious volume |
| 8 | Fireworks AI | Postpaid, pay-as-you-go | Low-latency open-model serving with production tuning |
| 9 | Groq | Postpaid, with a free tier | The fastest tokens per second on a curated open-model set |
| 10 | Replicate | Per-second compute | Image, video and audio models, plus custom model deploys |
This is a comparison published by SuperbAPI, and SuperbAPI is listed first. Billing models are shown rather than prices: rates change often enough that any figure printed here would be wrong before it was useful. Check current pricing with each provider.
The 10 alternatives in detail
1. SuperbAPI
An independent, prepaid, OpenAI-compatible aggregator: one balance, one base URL, and text, code, image and video models behind a single key.
You top up once and every call draws down that balance at the model's own rate — no subscription, no monthly minimum, and no invoice arriving after the fact. Keys can be scoped to specific models and given a budget cap, so a test key cannot spend production's money, and credit is valid for 12 months. Requests fail over to another upstream serving the same model, and a call that ultimately fails bills nothing.
2. Portkey
A gateway layer that sits in front of the provider accounts you already hold, adding routing, retries, caching, guardrails and tracing.
Same category as LiteLLM — a layer in front of the provider accounts you hold yourself — so the switch is a like-for-like one. The difference that matters is billing: saas or self-hosted; you bring provider keys, against LiteLLM's open source, self-hosted; paid enterprise tier.
3. Helicone
An observability platform for LLM traffic — request logging, tracing, cost attribution — reached through a proxy or async ingestion.
Same category as LiteLLM — a layer in front of the provider accounts you hold yourself — so the switch is a like-for-like one. The difference that matters is billing: open source or cloud; you bring provider keys, against LiteLLM's open source, self-hosted; paid enterprise tier.
4. Vercel AI Gateway
A routing and failover gateway integrated with the Vercel AI SDK and the rest of the Vercel platform.
Same category as LiteLLM — a layer in front of the provider accounts you hold yourself — so the switch is a like-for-like one. The difference that matters is billing: credits or bring-your-own-key, inside the vercel platform, against LiteLLM's open source, self-hosted; paid enterprise tier.
5. Cloudflare AI Gateway
An edge layer in front of the provider accounts you already hold, adding caching, rate limiting, retries and analytics.
Same category as LiteLLM — a layer in front of the provider accounts you hold yourself — so the switch is a like-for-like one. The difference that matters is billing: platform feature; you bring provider keys, against LiteLLM's open source, self-hosted; paid enterprise tier.
Also worth knowing
These are further from what LiteLLM does, but each is the right answer to a specific question:
- 6. OpenRouter — The widest model catalogue behind a single OpenAI-compatible key. Credits, plus bring-your-own-key.
- 7. Together AI — Open-weight inference and fine-tuning at serious volume. Postpaid, pay-as-you-go.
- 8. Fireworks AI — Low-latency open-model serving with production tuning. Postpaid, pay-as-you-go.
- 9. Groq — The fastest tokens per second on a curated open-model set. Postpaid, with a free tier.
- 10. Replicate — Image, video and audio models, plus custom model deploys. Per-second compute.
Where LiteLLM still wins
Control and provider coverage. Self-hosting means no third party sees your traffic and no reseller sits between you and your vendor rates — which for regulated workloads is not a preference but a requirement. Its provider coverage is also unusually wide. If you have the platform engineering to run it, it is a strong answer.
How to migrate off LiteLLM
Both speak OpenAI, so the client change is trivial. The decision is architectural: moving to a hosted aggregator means giving up self-hosting in exchange for not operating it, and swapping many provider accounts for one balance. Teams with a compliance reason to self-host should stay.
LiteLLM alternatives: common questions
Is LiteLLM better than a hosted gateway?
It is better when you need self-hosting — no third party in the request path, direct vendor rates, full control. It is worse when nobody wants to operate a proxy, because you still hold and maintain every provider account underneath it.
Is LiteLLM free?
The open-source SDK and proxy are free. The infrastructure, the on-call and the maintenance are the real cost, and there is a paid enterprise tier for larger deployments.
What is the hosted equivalent of LiteLLM?
An aggregator such as SuperbAPI: one OpenAI-compatible endpoint across many vendors, with nothing for you to run, and one prepaid balance instead of separate provider accounts.
Where SuperbAPI fits
SuperbAPI is an independent, prepaid, OpenAI-compatible aggregator: one wallet, one base URL, and text, code, image and video models behind a single key. Keys can be scoped to specific models and capped with a budget, so the balance is a hard ceiling rather than a starting point.
SuperbAPI is an independent aggregator and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or partnered with any model owner. Third-party product names are used nominatively to describe compatibility and routing. Comparisons reflect our understanding at publication and may change.