LLM Gateway vs Bifrost
The question that decides it: Is a permissive licence with no hosted escape hatch worth more to you than a copyleft one that comes with a managed service?
Our verdict
You want a permissive licence you can embed without legal review, or you need an air-gapped install: Bifrost, Apache-2.0 and self-host only. You want to start on someone else's infrastructure and move in-house later without changing products: LLM Gateway, provided AGPL-3.0 is acceptable and you accept 5% on hosted credit.
Why
Both are free to run and neither takes a cut of your tokens when self-hosted: both record a zero token markup and no seat fee. So this is not a pricing comparison, it is a licence and deployment comparison, and those are the two fields most likely to be decided by someone other than you.
Bifrost is Apache-2.0 and self-host only — there is no vendor-hosted build to fall back on. That is a real constraint and also the source of its strongest property: it is one of only four products here that supports air-gapped installation, which matters if the network the gateway sits on has no route to the internet at all. Permissive licensing means you can modify and embed it without the obligations copyleft creates. Its published reach is 20 to 23 upstream providers, narrower than LLM Gateway's, and it does not publish a total model count.
LLM Gateway can be run either way, which is its main structural advantage: the same product covers a hosted trial and an eventual in-house deployment, so the migration is a deployment change rather than a vendor change. The hosted side costs 5% on credit purchases; the self-hosted side costs nothing. It also publishes a SOC 2 report, which Bifrost does not, and states 200 models across 40 upstream providers. The cost is the licence: AGPL-3.0 obligations attach if you modify it and convey it onward, which is a conversation Apache-2.0 never starts.
On data handling the two answer differently rather than better or worse. Bifrost makes logging configurable with a documented off switch and states 365-day retention, but publishes no zero-data-retention position and does not say whether it trains on customer data — both of which are moot when you are the one running it. LLM Gateway logs metadata only, allows logging off, states 30-day retention and states it does not train on customer data, which is the more complete answer but also the answer a hosted service is obliged to give.
Which one, concretely
Choose LLM Gateway if
- You want one product that covers both a hosted start and a later in-house move
- You need a published SOC 2 report
- You want wider published reach — 200 models across 40 upstream providers
- You want metadata-only logging with a stated 30-day retention
Choose Bifrost if
- You need a permissive Apache-2.0 licence with no copyleft obligations
- You need air-gapped installation
- You want no vendor relationship and no hosted tier at all
- You are comfortable being the only operator, with no managed fallback
What catches people out
- Bifrost has no vendor-hosted option, so there is no way to trial it without standing up infrastructure.
- Bifrost publishes no SOC 2 report and no zero-data-retention position, and does not state whether it trains on customer data.
- LLM Gateway is AGPL-3.0; modifying and conveying it onward carries obligations that Apache-2.0 does not.
- LLM Gateway's hosted credits carry a 5% platform fee — the self-hosted build is the one with no fee.
- Bifrost publishes no total model count, only 20 to 23 upstream providers, so compare reach by provider rather than model.
- Bifrost's stated retention is 365 days, against 30 for LLM Gateway, though both are configurable when self-hosted.
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
9 of 17 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 | LLM Gateway | Bifrost |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of leaving Derived score, higher is easier | 72/88 Some work to leave | 100/100 Easy to leave |
| What kind of product Category | Open source | Open source |
| Who runs it Deployment model | Managed or self-host | Self-host only |
| Licence Licence | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Models available Models available | ~200 | Not published |
| Model providers reachable Upstream providers | ~40 | 20–23 |
| Markup on model prices Token markup | None | None |
| Fee to add funds Credit purchase fee | 5% | None |
| Monthly cost per person Seat fee | None | None |
| Runs fully disconnected Air-gapped deployment | Not published | Yes |
| SOC 2 audited SOC 2 audited | Yes | Not published |
| What gets logged Logged content | Metadata only | Your choice |
| You can turn logging off Body-logging opt-out | Yes | Yes |
| How long they keep it Default content retention (days) | 30 days | 365 days |
| Can use your own provider accounts BYOK supported | Yes | Yes |
| Could they train on your prompts Training on customer data | No | Not published — silence, not a no |
| GitHub stars GitHub stars | 1,643 | 8,359 |
| Free tier Free tier | $0 forever: no seats or minimums, BYOK free, 3 free models limited to 20 req/min, 30-day data retention; hosted credits carry a 5% platform fee. | OSS tier is "Free Forever": drop-in gateway, OpenTelemetry observability, budgets, rate limits, virtual keys, custom routing, fallbacks, simple and semantic caching, MCP gateway, prompt repository. |
for LLM Gateway and for Bifrost. Want more fields, or a third option in the mix? Open these two in the full comparison tool.
Common questions
Is Bifrost or LLM Gateway the better self-hosted gateway?
Bifrost if the licence matters most: Apache-2.0 imposes no copyleft obligations and it supports air-gapped installation. LLM Gateway if breadth matters more, at 200 models across 40 upstream providers with a published SOC 2 report, and if you want the same product available as a hosted service while you migrate.
Does either one charge a fee when self-hosted?
No. Both record a zero token markup and no seat fee, and both are free to run on your own infrastructure. The only fee in this pair is on the hosted side of LLM Gateway, where buying credit carries a 5% platform charge. Self-hosting either one costs you infrastructure and nothing else.
Which one supports air-gapped deployment?
Bifrost. It is one of only four products in this catalog that record air-gapped installation as supported, alongside LiteLLM, Orq.ai Router and TrueFoundry AI Gateway. LLM Gateway does not publish an air-gapped position, which is recorded as unpublished rather than as a no — worth confirming directly if that is a hard requirement.