# Rt · Model Router — element 4 of 58 > One key. Every model. Turns many model APIs into one decision. - **Group:** 1 · Intelligence - **Necessity:** Optional - **Price band:** $ · under $30/mo - **Maturity:** Emerging - **Edition:** v2026.Q3 · verified 2026-09-13 ## Leading tools (v2026.Q3) - **OpenRouter** — one api, every model - **LiteLLM** — open-source gateway standard - **Vercel AI Gateway** — zero-markup managed gateway - **Cloudflare AI Gateway** — free edge control plane - **Portkey** — governance gateway, now panw ## Our take A router is optional until you have two models in production. Then it's plumbing you'll wish you'd laid earlier. ## Combines with Fm, Ow ## The top 5 — deep dossier (verified 2026-09-13) OpenRouter, and it isn't close for the default case — 400+ models behind one key, 25 trillion tokens a week (5x in six months), 8M developers, and a $113M Series B at $1.3B led by CapitalG (May 2026) that made it the category's only unicorn — and, in August 2026, a Stripe acquisition at more than $7B. Pay its ~5.5% credit fee as rent for never touching provider plumbing. LiteLLM is the pick when keys and traffic must stay in your VPC — the open-source gateway standard with a 2026 Rust core. Vercel AI Gateway wins on price (genuinely 0% markup, free BYOK) if you live in the AI SDK; Cloudflare AI Gateway when you're already on Cloudflare and want the free edge control plane; Portkey when enterprise governance is the job — bought by Palo Alto Networks in May 2026, which is both its endorsement and its risk. 1. **OpenRouter** (OpenRouter, Inc. → Stripe (acquired Aug 16, 2026)) — Pass-through token pricing (0% markup) · 5.5% fee on credit purchases ($0.80 min; 5% via crypto) · BYOK free to 1M req/mo, then 5%. Best for: Any team that wants every model behind one key and one invoice today, with zero infrastructure to run. Why: The category's runaway aggregator: 25T tokens/week (up 5x in six months, on pace for a quadrillion/year), 8M+ developers, 400+ models across 60+ providers, and a $113M Series B at ~$1.3B (May 2026) with CapitalG, NVIDIA, ServiceNow, MongoDB, Snowflake and Databricks all on the round. Edge routing adds ~25ms; pricing is pure pass-through, so the only cost is the credit fee. Sacra pegs annualized platform revenue at ~$50M by Mar 2026 — proof the ~5% take rate model works at scale. Watch: Stripe agreed to acquire OpenRouter for more than $7B on Aug 16, 2026 — the independence that made a neutral router trustworthy is now a corporate relationship, and the roadmap belongs to a payments company. That 5.5% compounds painfully at volume — heavy spenders graduate to direct provider contracts or BYOK (which itself costs 5% past 1M req/mo). Fully managed only: your entire model traffic transits a single startup, and critics argue frontier-lab consolidation erodes the aggregator's reason to exist. [https://openrouter.ai](https://openrouter.ai) 2. **LiteLLM** (BerriAI (YC W23; MIT OSS)) — Open source free forever (self-host) · Enterprise custom annual, sized to request capacity — never per-token · 30-day trial. Best for: Teams that need the router inside their own VPC — keys, logs, and spend controls that never leave your infrastructure. Why: The open-source gateway standard: 53.8k GitHub stars, 1,000+ contributors, 240M+ Docker pulls, and testimonials from Netflix, NVIDIA, Okta and Stripe. Claims 140+ providers and ~1,900 models behind one OpenAI-compatible API with virtual keys, team budgets, fallbacks and Prometheus metrics all in the free tier. The 2026 Rust-core gateway answered the performance critics: 0.66ms added at p99 (vendor benchmark, ~2,800 RPS). Watch: You run it — upgrades, scaling, and a famously sprawling codebase (2.5k open PRs) are your problem. Performance numbers are vendor-published; rivals (Bifrost) built entire marketing campaigns on LiteLLM's Python-era overhead. Enterprise pricing is quote-only and opaque. [https://www.litellm.ai](https://www.litellm.ai) 3. **Vercel AI Gateway** (Vercel) — 0% markup, 0% platform fee — provider list price via credits · BYOK free · free tier (subset of models) · metered add-ons (team-wide ZDR/allowlist $0.10/1k req). Best for: TypeScript/AI SDK teams and anyone who refuses to pay a take rate on tokens at all. Why: The price disruptor: GA since Aug 21, 2025 with sub-20ms latency, hundreds of models, automatic failover — and genuinely zero markup, including on BYOK, where OpenRouter charges 5%+. Its monthly production index (a real telemetry set: open-weight models hit 29% of gateway tokens on <4% of spend, Jul 2026) shows serious traffic already flows through it. Vercel subsidizes the gateway to sell the surrounding cloud, which is exactly why it's cheap. Watch: Youngest of the leaders; observability and governance arrive as metered add-ons (trace drains, tag writes, query fees) that quietly rebuild a bill. Loss-leader economics could change when strategy does. Deepest value only lands if you're inside the Vercel/AI SDK ecosystem. [https://vercel.com/ai-gateway](https://vercel.com/ai-gateway) 4. **Cloudflare AI Gateway** (Cloudflare) — Core features free (analytics, caching, rate limits, dynamic routing) · unified billing +5% on credit purchases · Workers Paid ($5/mo) lifts log caps to 10M/gateway. Best for: Teams already on Cloudflare who want a free, edge-speed control plane — caching, rate limiting, DLP — in front of any model API. Why: The strongest free tier in the category, run on the network a fifth of the web already transits. The Aug 27, 2025 refresh added dynamic routing (A/B tests, per-user limits, model chaining), Secrets Store key management, DLP scanning in the AI firewall, and 350+ models across major providers — with optional unified billing at a 5% credit fee only if you want one invoice. Watch: Routing intelligence is thinner than dedicated routers — no learned model selection, and provider translation coverage trails OpenRouter's catalog. Observability depth is Cloudflare-grade metrics, not LLM-native evals. Least compelling if you're not otherwise a Cloudflare shop. [https://www.cloudflare.com/products/ai-gateway/](https://www.cloudflare.com/products/ai-gateway/) 5. **Portkey** (Portkey → Palo Alto Networks (closed May 29, 2026)) — Gateway fully open source (Mar 2026) · Developer free (10k logs/mo) · Production $49/mo (100k logs, +$9/100k) · Enterprise custom (VPC, SOC2/HIPAA). Best for: Enterprises that treat the gateway as a governance layer — guardrails, RBAC, budgets, prompt management, audit — not just a switchboard. Why: The governance-first gateway at real scale: 1T+ tokens and 120M+ requests daily across 24,000+ organizations, $180M+ in managed AI spend (Mar 2026), with the full enterprise gateway open-sourced that same month. Palo Alto Networks acquired it (closed May 29, 2026) to anchor Prisma AIRS — the clearest possible signal that routing is becoming the enforcement point for AI security. Watch: The acquisition cuts both ways: the roadmap now serves Prisma AIRS, and the standalone product's independence is over. Buying it increasingly means buying Palo Alto. Pre-acquisition Portkey was also sub-scale commercially ($15M Series A) relative to its traffic. [https://portkey.ai](https://portkey.ai) ### How to choose - If You just hit two models in production and have no infra team → OpenRouter. One key, one invoice, ~25ms overhead; treat the 5.5% credit fee as rent until your spend justifies direct contracts. - If Keys, prompts, or logs cannot leave your VPC — or procurement says self-host → LiteLLM open source. It's the de facto standard (Netflix, NVIDIA testimonials), and the Rust core removed the old performance excuse. - If Gateway fees offend you and you're in the TypeScript/AI SDK world → Vercel AI Gateway — 0% markup and free BYOK is the best sticker price in the category; just watch the metered observability add-ons. - If You're already behind Cloudflare and mostly need caching, rate limits, and a kill switch → Cloudflare AI Gateway free tier first; add unified billing (+5%) only if the single invoice is worth it. - If The gateway is your AI governance and security enforcement point (regulated enterprise, agent fleets) → Portkey under Palo Alto — or self-host its now-open-source gateway if the acquisition roadmap worries you; Kong if you're already a Kong shop. ### The field (20 more) Requesty, Helicone AI Gateway, Bifrost, Kong AI Gateway, Microsoft Foundry Model Router, Bedrock Intelligent Prompt Routing, LLM Gateway, TrueFoundry AI Gateway, Eden AI, Not Diamond, Arch, Apache APISIX AI Gateway, Higress, new-api, RouteLLM (fading), Glama Gateway, Martian (fading), Unify (dead), TensorZero (dead), MLflow AI Gateway (fading) Full dossier data: https://elems.ai/e/rt.json --- Source: [elems.ai](https://elems.ai/e/rt.html) — the periodic table of the AI-led startup. Data: https://elems.ai/elements.json (CC BY 4.0, cite elems.ai).