Honest side-by-side comparisons with the main LLM routers, gateways and direct provider APIs. Updated against each vendor's public documentation — spot an error? Tell us and we fix it.
LiteLLM is the go-to open-source router: 100+ providers, runs on your infra, zero vendor lock-in. HiWay is the managed alternative — you pay not to run it.
OpenRouter is the fastest way to try 100+ models from one key. HiWay is the cheapest way to run them at scale, with your own keys, EU-hosted.
Vercel AI Gateway is built for apps that live on Vercel — zero-config, one SDK, one dashboard. HiWay is the provider-neutral alternative: smart routing, EU hosting, BYOK, runs anywhere.
Calling Claude direct is the simplest possible setup. HiWay keeps that simplicity, adds smart downgrades to Haiku, multi-provider fallback when Anthropic has an outage, and burn-rate alerts before a runaway agent drains $500.
Cloudflare AI Gateway is a cheap edge caching + analytics layer in front of LLMs. HiWay is a smart router that picks cheaper capable models per request. Two different jobs — you can even stack them.
Helicone is best-in-class LLM observability — a logging proxy with great dashboards and a free OSS tier. HiWay is a cost-first router that picks cheaper models. Same integration slot, different jobs.
LangSmith traces your chains and runs your evals. HiWay picks the cheapest capable model per request and keeps your inference cost flat. Two different layers — they stack cleanly.
Calling OpenAI direct is the most well-trodden path in the LLM world. HiWay keeps that simplicity, adds smart downgrades to GPT-5-mini, Anthropic/Google fallback when OpenAI has an outage, and burn-rate alerts before an agent loop drains your card.
Portkey is a deep observability and governance layer for LLM traffic. HiWay is a cost-first router that picks the cheapest capable model per request. Different primary jobs, different KPIs.
Kong AI Gateway is an enterprise gateway that added AI features. HiWay is AI-native. If you already run Kong, extending it makes sense. If you don't, HiWay is lighter.
Martian routes by prompt-similarity classification. HiWay routes by request complexity scoring. Same promise (pay less), different method.
Requesty is a smaller OpenRouter-shaped product — hosted wallet, catalog of models, per-call markup. HiWay is BYOK, EU-hosted, flat fee, with complexity-based routing.
Unify's strength is benchmarking models continuously. HiWay's is saving money without tuning. Two valid philosophies, different overhead.