LiteLLM vs OpenRouter vs Helicone vs Cloudflare AI Gateway
A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.
| LIT LiteLLM One OpenAI-style gateway to 100+ model providers, with spend controls Visit |
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Helicone
Open-source LLM observability, now in maintenance mode
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Cloudflare AI Gateway
LLM proxy with free caching, rate limits and spend caps across provide...
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| RECATOOLS Score | 8 / 10 | 8.6 / 10 | 7.6 / 10 | 7.7 / 10 |
| Capability | — | |||
| Value for money | — | |||
| Ease of use | — | |||
| ASEAN readiness | — | |||
| API quality | — | |||
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium | Open Source | Freemium |
| Free tier | Full open-source gateway and Python SDK, free to self-host forever (MIT, except the enterprise/ directory) | Free plan: 25+ free models, 20 requests a minute and 50 a day (1,000 a day after buying $10 of credits) | Apache-2.0 open-source stack, free to self-host with Docker; maintenance-only updates. Hosted Hobby tier (10,000 requests/mo) is closed to new sign-ups | Analytics, caching, rate limiting, spend limits and two DLP profiles free on all plans; new accounts' logs: 200,000 events a day, 3-day retention |
| Paid from | Custom (LiteLLM Enterprise, annual contract sized to request volume; 30-day trial key) | Provider list price plus a 5.5% fee on credit purchases (8% on Business) | Hosted Pro listed at $79/mo, but new sign-ups have been disabled since March 2026 | Free core; logs, Logpush, Guardrails cost via Workers Paid ($5/mo) or usage; 5% fee on credits |
| Has API | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Open source | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Free to use | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Users | — | — | — | — |
| Founded | 2023 | 2023 | 2023 | 2023 |
| Maker | Independent (Berrie AI Incorporated / BerriAI) | — | Mintlify (acquired March 2026) | Cloudflare, Inc. |
| Verdict | LiteLLM is the most widely used open-source way to put many model providers behind one API with cost controls, and its move to a Rust core should cut overhead. Its security record in 2026 is the main caution: a poisoned... |
OpenRouter removes the chore of holding a dozen provider keys and invoices: one OpenAI-compatible endpoint reaches more than 450 models, fails over when a provider stalls, and makes it quick to compare two models or swap... |
Helicone was one of the lowest-friction ways to see what your LLM calls cost. Since Mintlify acquired it in March 2026 it has been in maintenance mode, with security fixes and new-model support but no new features, and n... |
AI Gateway puts a free control layer in front of LLM API calls: one endpoint for many providers, with token and cost analytics, exact-match caching, rate limiting, spend limits, retries and model fallback. Inference is p... |
| Full review → | Full review → | Full review → | Full review → |
Comparisons cover up to 4 tools. Scores are RECATOOLS editorial assessments; verify current pricing on each vendor's site.