Amux AI

OpenRouter alternatives

The best OpenRouter alternatives

The leading OpenRouter alternatives are Amux AI, Requesty, Vercel AI Gateway, Cloudflare AI Gateway, LiteLLM and Portkey. Teams usually switch for three reasons: lower top-up fees and model prices, broader native protocol support, or finer-grained team and budget controls. Below, six leading options are compared on pricing, protocol compatibility, hosting model and governance.

Get startedBrowse models and pricing

Last verified 2026-10-19

At a glance

OptionDeploymentPricingBest for
Amux AIOur productHostedNo markup or top-up fee; discounted low-cost and official channelsTeams that want lower costs, multiple native protocols, or enterprise-grade organization and budget management.
RequestyHosted5% service feeTeams that need an OpenAI-compatible API with enterprise RBAC and SSO.
Vercel AI GatewayHostedNo markup; payment fees passed onTeams already building on Vercel and the AI SDK.
Cloudflare AI GatewayHosted (edge network)Core features free; 5% fee on Unified Billing creditsTeams on Cloudflare Workers that want caching and observability in front of existing provider accounts.
LiteLLMOpen source, self-hostedFree and open source; pay each upstream directlyTeams that require fully self-managed deployment and strict control over the data path.
PortkeyHosted or self-hostedPriced by log volume, from $49/monthEnterprise teams that prioritize logging, guardrails and compliance.

What to look for

  1. 01

    Pricing and fees

    Whether inference is marked up, whether top-ups carry a fee and whether credit expires. At high volume, a few percentage points translate directly into cost.

  2. 02

    Protocol compatibility

    Whether the protocols your SDKs and tools use are supported natively. Native support means migrating by changing the base URL, with no code rewrite.

  3. 03

    Model and provider coverage

    Whether the models you need are available, and whether each model can be served by several providers — which determines price headroom and availability.

  4. 04

    Hosted or self-hosted

    Hosted services remove deployment and operations work; self-hosted options give full control of the data path but leave upstream accounts, keys and scaling to you.

  5. 05

    Teams and governance

    Organizations, workspaces, role permissions and spend limits are the foundation for using LLMs across a growing team.

  6. 06

    Data privacy

    Whether prompts and responses are stored, whether they are used for training, and whether zero-retention options exist.

Top OpenRouter alternatives

  1. 01

    Amux AI

    Our productHosted

    A hosted LLM API gateway with 80+ text, image and video models, no inference markup, no top-up fees and low-cost channels far below official pricing and discounted official channels. Natively supports OpenAI, Anthropic and Gemini protocols plus vendor image and video protocols.

    Pricing
    No markup or top-up fee; discounted low-cost and official channels
    Best for
    Teams that want lower costs, multiple native protocols, or enterprise-grade organization and budget management.
    Considerations
    Embeddings, speech and SAML SSO are on the roadmap; bringing your own upstream keys is not supported yet.
    Get startedSee the full Amux AI vs OpenRouter comparison
  2. 02

    Requesty

    Hosted

    A hosted, OpenAI-compatible router advertising 600+ models, with fallbacks, load balancing and latency routing.

    Pricing
    5% service fee
    Best for
    Teams that need an OpenAI-compatible API with enterprise RBAC and SSO.
    Considerations
    Adds a 5% service fee; the free tier allows 200 requests per day on free models only.
  3. 03

    Vercel AI Gateway

    Hosted

    Vercel's hosted gateway with no markup and no platform fee on tokens, including BYOK.

    Pricing
    No markup; payment fees passed on
    Best for
    Teams already building on Vercel and the AI SDK.
    Considerations
    Payment processing fees are passed on to you; team-wide zero data retention and provider allowlists are billed per request.
  4. 04

    Cloudflare AI Gateway

    Hosted (edge network)

    A gateway on Cloudflare's edge network with free analytics, caching and rate limiting; credits are purchased through Unified Billing.

    Pricing
    Core features free; 5% fee on Unified Billing credits
    Best for
    Teams on Cloudflare Workers that want caching and observability in front of existing provider accounts.
    Considerations
    Unified Billing charges a 5% fee on credit purchases; log allowances depend on the Workers plan.
  5. 05

    LiteLLM

    Open source, self-hosted

    An MIT-licensed Python SDK and self-hosted proxy that unifies calls to 100+ LLMs.

    Pricing
    Free and open source; pay each upstream directly
    Best for
    Teams that require fully self-managed deployment and strict control over the data path.
    Considerations
    You deploy and operate it yourself and manage accounts, keys and billing for each upstream; SSO and audit logs are enterprise features.
  6. 06

    Portkey

    Hosted or self-hosted

    A gateway centered on observability and governance, available as open-source self-hosted software or a hosted service.

    Pricing
    Priced by log volume, from $49/month
    Best for
    Enterprise teams that prioritize logging, guardrails and compliance.
    Considerations
    Priced by log volume — the Production plan is $49/month for 100,000 logs; you bring your own upstream accounts.

Frequently asked questions

It depends on your priority. For lower costs, multiple native protocols or team budgets, choose Amux AI. If you are deep in the Vercel or Cloudflare ecosystem, use that platform’s gateway. For fully self-managed deployment, choose LiteLLM. For logging and compliance governance, choose Portkey.

Among hosted options, Amux AI has no inference markup and no top-up fee, and low-cost channels go far below official pricing while official channels are discounted too; Requesty adds a 5% service fee and Cloudflare Unified Billing charges 5% on credit purchases. Self-hosted options have no platform fee but carry deployment and operations costs, and you pay each upstream at its official price.

Most platforms are compatible with the OpenAI SDK, so switching usually means changing the base URL and API key. The main differences are model ID formats and provider routing parameters, so check model names before switching.

Self-hosting gives the most control but requires you to deploy, scale and manage accounts and keys for every upstream. Hosted gateways work out of the box, with billing and failover handled by the platform. Unless your scale or compliance requirements are extreme, a hosted gateway usually costs less overall.

Get started

Minutes from now,
your first request is live.

  1. 1Create an account
  2. 2Create an API key
  3. 3Swap the base_url and call
Base URL
Get startedView pricing

More comparisons

OpenRouter and other product names mentioned on this page are trademarks of their respective owners. Information about third-party products is compiled from their official public sources for evaluation purposes only and may change; refer to each vendor's website for current details. To report an inaccuracy, contact support@amux.ai.