AI Gateway HQ vs Respan
The question that decides it: Do you primarily need operating controls or an integrated tracing and evaluation workflow?
Our verdict
Evaluate AI Gateway HQ for hosted policy and spend controls with metadata-based reporting. Evaluate Respan when tracing, evaluations and prompt management are central to the workflow.
Why
AI Gateway HQ emphasizes organization and workload-key boundaries, pre-request reservations and a decision ledger. Respan combines gateway routing with tracing, evaluations and prompt management. These are different reasons to buy, even when both route a compatible request. AI Gateway HQ documentation; Respan plans.
Their evidence stores also differ. AI Gateway HQ’s ordinary ledger omits prompt and output bodies; Respan’s catalogue records full-content logging and plan-dependent retention. Confirm what your debugging or evaluation process actually needs before adopting either default.
Respan advertises enterprise self-hosting, while AI Gateway HQ’s private-deployment work is a design engagement rather than a generally available deployment. Neither description establishes an independently validated air-gap setup. Review the contract and architecture before selecting on that basis.
Which one, concretely
Choose AI Gateway HQ if
- Your evaluation prioritizes policy decisions and budget reservations
- You want ordinary operating metadata rather than default prompt storage
Choose Respan if
- You need integrated tracing, evaluations and prompt management
- You want to evaluate an advertised enterprise self-hosting option
What catches people out
- AI Gateway HQ has no public exhaustive model inventory; Respan’s catalog listings also require account and funding checks.
- Tracing availability does not establish a complete agent trace without application instrumentation.
- Confirm retention, configuration and edition scope before handling sensitive content.
Side by side
Interpret these fields: How much does an LLM gateway lock you in? · LLM gateway compliance: SOC 2, HIPAA and evidence · How LLM gateway failover actually works
2 of 4 fields differ, marked with a dot. Every figure links to the vendor page it came from. Blank values read Not published rather than No — silence from a vendor is not a negative answer.
| Field | AI Gateway HQ | Respan |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of leaving Derived score, higher is easier | 64/84 Some work to leave | 84/84 Some work to leave |
| Quality testing Evals | Not published | Yes |
| Prompt versioning Prompt management | Not published | Yes |
| Traces you can take elsewhere Distributed tracing | Not documented | OpenTelemetry |
| What they keep if you change nothing Logging default | Metadata only, not content | Yes — prompts and replies |
for AI Gateway HQ and for Respan. Want more fields, or a third option in the mix? Open these two in the full comparison tool.
Common questions
Does AI Gateway HQ replace Respan’s evaluations?
The reviewed AI Gateway HQ documentation establishes policy and operating evidence, not an equivalent evaluation platform. Respan documents integrated evaluation features.