# The best ZenMux alternatives

> The leading ZenMux alternatives are Amux AI, OpenRouter, Requesty, Vercel AI Gateway, LiteLLM and Portkey. Teams usually switch for three reasons: lower prices on leading models, vendor-native image and video protocols, or fuller team and budget controls. Below, six leading options are compared on pricing, protocol compatibility, hosting model and governance.

Last verified 2026-10-19 · https://amux.ai/alternatives/zenmux

## At a glance

| Option | Deployment | Pricing | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amux AI | Hosted | No markup or top-up fee; discounted low-cost and official channels | Teams that want lower costs, vendor-native protocols, or enterprise-grade organization and budget management. |
| OpenRouter | Hosted | No inference markup; 5.5% fee on card top-ups | Developers who prioritize model count and need broad long-tail and open-weight coverage. |
| Requesty | Hosted | 5% service fee | Teams that need EU data residency, visual routing policies and an MCP gateway. |
| Vercel AI Gateway | Hosted | No markup; payment fees passed on | Teams already building on Vercel and the AI SDK. |
| LiteLLM | Open source, self-hosted | Free and open source; pay each upstream directly | Teams that require fully self-managed deployment and strict control over the data path. |
| Portkey | Hosted or self-hosted | Priced by log volume, from $49/month | Enterprise teams that prioritize logging, guardrails and compliance. |

## What to look for

- **Pricing**: Whether inference is marked up, whether prices below the official rate are offered, whether top-ups carry a fee and whether credit expires.
- **Protocol compatibility**: Whether the protocols your SDKs and tools use are supported natively, including the default form of the Gemini SDK. Native support means migrating by changing the base URL.
- **Multimodal coverage**: Whether image and video generation are covered beyond text, and whether they keep the vendor’s native request format.
- **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.
- **Teams and governance**: Organizations, workspaces, role permissions and multi-level spend limits are the foundation for using LLMs across a growing team.
- **Data privacy**: Whether prompts and responses are stored, whether they are used for training, and whether zero-retention options exist.

## Top ZenMux alternatives

### 1. Amux AI

A hosted LLM API gateway with 70+ 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, vendor-native protocols, or enterprise-grade organization and budget management.
- Considerations: Embeddings, speech and subscription plans are on the roadmap; bringing your own upstream keys is not supported yet.

### 2. OpenRouter

A hosted model marketplace advertising 500+ models from 80+ providers, with BYOK and enterprise SSO.

- Pricing: No inference markup; 5.5% fee on card top-ups
- Best for: Developers who prioritize model count and need broad long-tail and open-weight coverage.
- Considerations: Top-ups carry a fee; workspace budgets and role assignment are Enterprise-only.

### 3. Requesty

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

- Pricing: 5% service fee
- Best for: Teams that need EU data residency, visual routing policies and an MCP gateway.
- Considerations: Adds a 5% service fee; group budgets, full RBAC and SSO are Enterprise-only.

### 4. Vercel AI Gateway

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: Requires a Vercel team account; purchased credits expire after one year.

### 5. LiteLLM

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. Portkey

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

### Which ZenMux alternative is right for me?

It depends on your priority. For lower costs, vendor-native image and video protocols or team budgets, choose Amux AI. For the largest model catalog, choose OpenRouter. For EU data residency, choose Requesty. If you are deep in the Vercel ecosystem, use Vercel AI Gateway. For fully self-managed deployment, choose LiteLLM.

### Which alternative is the cheapest to run?

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; OpenRouter charges 5.5% on card top-ups, Requesty adds a 5% service fee, and Vercel passes payment fees on to you. Self-hosted options have no platform fee but carry deployment and operations costs, and you pay each upstream at its official price.

### Which alternatives let me call video models in the vendor’s native format?

Amux AI natively implements Alibaba Cloud Model Studio, Volcengine Seedance, MiniMax and xAI video protocols, so existing client code only needs a new base URL, and also offers a unified task API. Most other hosted options define their own video APIs, so calling code has to be rewritten for each platform.

### Is it hard to switch from ZenMux to another platform?

Most platforms are compatible with the OpenAI SDK, so switching usually means changing the base URL and API key. Code that uses the Vertex-style Gemini endpoint can drop vertexai=True on platforms that support the default Gemini form.

_ZenMux 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._