8 Best LiteLLM Alternatives in 2026 (Open Source)
LiteLLM — Open-source Python SDK and AI gateway for calling 100+ LLMs through a unified OpenAI-compatible interface. Unlike OpenRouter (hosted-only routing), LiteLLM is self-hostable and provides a full gateway with per-user spend tracking, virtual keys, and A2A/MCP protocol support — making it the enterprise LLM traffic controller
Short answer
- Closest match to LiteLLM: AI Gateway.
- Most actively developed: OmniRoute (5,114 commits in the last 90 days).
- Fastest growing: OmniRoute (+11,241 GitHub stars in the last 30 days).
- No commit in 6+ months: OpenLM.
These 8 open-source tools do the same job. They are ordered by how closely they match LiteLLM, with live GitHub data so you can see which projects are actively maintained.
By package downloads LiteLLM is the most used here (89.4M in the last 30 days), even though OmniRoute has the most GitHub stars. See all agent tools by downloads.
| Tool | GitHub stars | Stars / 30d | Last commit | Downloads / 30d |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LiteLLM(original) | 60.1k | +2,982 | 2026-10-03 | 89.4M |
| AI Gateway | 13.1k | +323 | 2026-05-25 | 1.9K |
| Bifrost AI Gateway | 8.5k | +830 | 2026-10-03 | — |
| OmniRoute | 72.5k | +11,241 | 2026-10-02 | 232.6K |
| TensorZero | 11.7k | +88 | 2026-06-04 | 37.0K |
| OpenLM | 368 | 0 | 2023-05-19 | 713 |
| NadirClaw | 655 | +45 | 2026-10-02 | — |
| Manifest | 7.6k | +543 | 2026-10-03 | — |
| LLM | 12.6k | +178 | 2026-09-22 | 472.7K |
1. AI Gateway
A blazing fast AI Gateway with integrated guardrails. Route to 200+ LLMs, 50+ AI Guardrails with 1 fast & friendly API.
What sets it apart: vs LiteLLM: production-focused with guardrails, caching, and MCP Gateway; vs OpenRouter: self-hostable with enterprise governance and conditional routing rather than just model access
Best for: Teams using multiple LLM providers needing unified routing; Production AI apps requiring reliability (retries/fallbacks); Organizations wanting centralized LLM cost and access control
2. Bifrost AI Gateway
Fastest enterprise AI gateway (50x faster than LiteLLM) with adaptive load balancer, cluster mode, guardrails, 1000+ models support & <100 µs overhead at 5k RPS.
What sets it apart: Fastest AI gateway with 11us overhead at 5k RPS — built in Go for extreme performance vs LiteLLM/Portkey's Python-based proxies
Best for: High-throughput production AI gateways needing sub-millisecond overhead; Multi-provider failover with zero-downtime requirements
3. OmniRoute
OpenAI-compatible gateway for multi-provider routing, retries, fallbacks, caching, and observability
What sets it apart: It combines an OpenAI-compatible endpoint with broad provider routing, quota-aware failover, token compression, and a maintained free-tier catalog.
Best for: Developers building agents or coding workflows across multiple model providers; Teams seeking a single OpenAI-compatible endpoint with provider failover; Users managing multiple provider quotas and free tiers
4. TensorZero
TensorZero is an open-source LLMOps platform that unifies an LLM gateway, observability, evaluation, optimization, and experimentation.
What sets it apart: Only LLM gateway that combines inference, observability, evaluation, and optimization in one Rust-based system with data flywheel — vs LiteLLM (routing only) or Langfuse (observability only)
Best for: Teams wanting a unified LLM gateway with built-in optimization feedback loop; Production systems needing <1ms latency overhead at scale; Organizations wanting to continuously improve LLM performance from production data
5. OpenLM
OpenAI-compatible Python client that can call any LLM
What sets it apart: vs LiteLLM / AI SDK: minimalist OpenAI-compatible drop-in replacement — swap openlm for openai in imports and instantly access HuggingFace and Cohere with zero API changes
Best for: Switching between LLM providers without code changes; Multi-model comparison using OpenAI-compatible interface; Lightweight provider abstraction for Python projects
6. NadirClaw
Open-source LLM router and cost optimizer with an OpenAI-compatible proxy
What sets it apart: Local-first LLM cost optimizer — classifies prompt complexity in 10ms and routes simple requests to 10-20x cheaper models, with no third-party proxy or middleman
Best for: Teams spending heavily on LLM APIs wanting 40-70% cost reduction; AI coding assistants (Claude Code, Cursor) with mixed complexity prompts; Budget-conscious developers using multiple LLM providers
7. Manifest
Smart LLM Routing for OpenClaw. Cut Costs up to 70% 🦞🦚
What sets it apart: Free, open-source, local-first LLM router with transparent scoring — vs OpenRouter which is a cloud proxy with 5% fee and no routing transparency
Best for: Reducing LLM API costs by routing to cheapest capable model; Teams using multiple LLM providers who want automatic failover
8. LLM
Access large language models from the command-line
What sets it apart: vs direct API calls: Swiss-army-knife CLI that unifies 100+ LLMs behind one command, with automatic SQLite logging, embeddings, schemas, and a rich plugin ecosystem
Best for: Power users who want LLM access from the terminal; Quick prototyping and experimentation with multiple LLM providers; Building CLI-based LLM workflows with conversation history
FAQ
- What are the best alternatives to LiteLLM?
- The closest open-source alternatives to LiteLLM are AI Gateway, Bifrost AI Gateway and OmniRoute, followed by TensorZero, OpenLM and NadirClaw. They are ranked by how closely they match what LiteLLM does.
- Which LiteLLM alternative is the most popular?
- OmniRoute has the most GitHub stars among LiteLLM alternatives, with 72,500 stars.
- Which LiteLLM alternative is the most actively maintained?
- By recent activity, OmniRoute (5,114 commits in the last 90 days) is the most actively developed alternative.
Maintain LiteLLM or one of these alternatives?
Each tool page has a maintainer box: a README badge with your live rank and stars, or a homepage feature for $49 / 7 days.
LiteLLM · AI Gateway · Bifrost AI Gateway · OmniRoute · TensorZero · OpenLM