LLM Gateways Compared: LiteLLM vs OpenRouter vs Portkey

1Key Takeaways

• Originally published on AI Tech Connect .
• The short version If you call more than one model, or you plan to, you will eventually build a gateway whether you mean to or not.
• The only choice is whether you build it deliberately or accrete it as a mess of retry loops, environment variables and half-finished cost dashboards scattered across your services.
• Three tools dominate the deliberate route, and they are not really competitors — they are three different answers to the same question.