LLM gateways and routers for AI agents
6 APIs compared on price, free tier, MCP support and real usage. Prices from the vendors' pricing pages, checked Oct 9, 2026.
Free to start
6 of 6
Vercel AI Gateway, LiteLLM, OpenRouter
Official MCP server
3 of 6
plug straight into Claude Code, Cursor and others
| API | Free | Price | SDK downloads / wk | GitHub stars | MCP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vercel AI Gateway Unified API to hundreds of models with provider fallbacks, billed at provider list prices. |
$5/month of AI Gateway credits (free-tier... | Free plan then Provider list price per token, zero markup and no... |
27.7M | 27.2K | |
| LiteLLM Open-source proxy and SDK that calls 100+ LLMs in OpenAI format with keys, budgets and logging. |
Open-source gateway free to self-host | Free plan | 22.9M | 60.5K | |
| OpenRouter One OpenAI-compatible API for 500+ models across 80+ providers with routing and fallbacks. |
25+ free models, 50 requests/day | Free plan then Provider list price per token (no markup); fee on credit... |
1.3M | 262 | MCP |
| Portkey AI gateway with routing, fallbacks, caching, guardrails, prompt management and observability. |
Developer: 10k recorded logs/month, 3-day... | Free plan · paid from $49/mo | 925K | 13.2K | |
| Cloudflare AI Gateway Proxy for LLM providers adding analytics, caching, rate limiting, logging and unified billing. |
Core features (analytics, caching, rate... | Free plan then Unified Billing: 5% fee on credits purchased; provider... |
251K | 1,189 | MCP |
| Helicone Open-source LLM observability platform and AI gateway with caching, rate limits and fallbacks. |
Hobby: 10,000 requests/month, 1 GB storage, 1 seat | Free plan · paid from $79/mo | 2,989 | 6,210 | MCP |
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