IT AI Index
Index › Data platform › LLM gateways › Small business › September 2026 Edition

LLM gateways and observability for small business buyers

Asked as “LLM gateway”, and as “LLM observability and routing platform”, on behalf of a small B2B company. 52 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing
LiteLLM
Clear leader
46% of first choices, clear leader.
ShowinginAll 67 categories →

By buyer segment

The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment; they sit side by side and are never added together.
Small businessLiteLLM46%Clear leaderThis pageMid-marketLiteLLM38%ContestedStanding →EnterpriseLiteLLM29%ContestedStanding →

01The standing

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all twelve models, for a small B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01LiteLLM46%14%57endorsed leader
02Portkey15%8%49accepted challenger
03OpenRouter10%9%43accepted challenger
04Helicone10%22%36accepted challenger
05Cloudflare AI Gateway4%7%27accepted challenger
Show the one product at 0%, ordered by negative rate
06Bifrost0%15%13accepted challenger
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its vendor page.
Head to head
LiteLLM vs PortkeyLiteLLM vs HeliconePortkey vs Helicone

Recommended versus criticized

Every product with at least 10 labels here, on both axes. The 30% line names a quadrant, not the verdict above: that one needs more than 40%.

Criticized challengerCriticized default
Negative label rate →
01
02
03
04
05
06
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative60%
Key
01LiteLLM46%
02Portkey15%
03OpenRouter10%
04Helicone10%
05Cloudflare AI Gateway4%
06Bifrost0%

02What they warned about

Zero of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.4 mini, Gemini 3.5 Flash, Perplexity Sonar, Grok 4.1 Fast, Mistral Small, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Llama 4 Maverick, Qwen 3.7 Flash, Kimi K2, GLM 4.7 FlashX and MiniMax M2.5 changed. A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
LiteLLM
14%
8 of 57 labels negative · 7 of 12 models · 3 hard negative
“hundreds of publicly exposed LiteLLM servers** (a popular open-source AI gateway) were accepting the default master key (`sk-1234`) or required **no authentication at all**” Kimi K2, negative prompt
Helicone
22%
8 of 36 labels negative · 5 of 12 models · 5 hard negative
“Acquired by Mintlify (2026); in maintenance mode with no new features/updates ... not future-proof for production.” Grok 4.1 Fast, negative prompt
OpenRouter
9%
4 of 43 labels negative · 4 of 12 models · 1 hard negative
“No uptime SLA; auto-routing/fallbacks can silently send data to non-compliant providers ... risking data residency/GDPR issues” Grok 4.1 Fast, negative prompt
Portkey
8%
4 of 49 labels negative · 4 of 12 models · 1 hard negative
“**Portkey** – Hidden Costs & Design Gaps ... Billing surprise ... Higher latency” MiniMax M2.5, negative prompt

03What they cite

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list: twelve of the twelve in this edition, and all six flagship models on the expanded tier.

Sites the answers cite

66 of 72 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 6 of those lists are Google grounding redirects that name no site and are left out of the counts. 902 links across 220 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

truefoundry.com
vendor site · TrueFoundry37 answers · 51 citations · 10 models
braintrust.dev
vendor site · Braintrust27 answers · 38 citations · 10 models
orq.ai
27 answers · 29 citations · 10 models
techsy.io
27 answers · 27 citations · 10 models
dev.to
26 answers · 41 citations · 10 models
dataiku.com
vendor site · Dataiku26 answers · 26 citations · 9 models
respan.ai
vendor site · Respan25 answers · 27 citations · 10 models
getmaxim.ai
24 answers · 45 citations · 9 models
cloudzero.com
vendor site · CloudZero24 answers · 24 citations · 8 models
contabo.com
vendor site · Contabo14 answers · 14 citations · 7 models
openrouter.ai
vendor site · OpenRouter13 answers · 18 citations · 6 models
beri.net
11 answers · 12 citations · 8 models

Pages the answers cite

The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.

techsy.io/en/blog/best-llm-gateway-tools
27 answers · 10 models
dataiku.com/blog/best-llm-gateways
26 answers · 9 models
orq.ai/blog/best-llm-gateways
25 answers · 10 models
truefoundry.com/blog/best-llm-gateways
25 answers · 10 models
cloudzero.com/blog/llm-gateways
24 answers · 8 models
respan.ai/articles/best-llm-gateways
23 answers · 10 models
braintrust.dev/articles/best-llm-gateways-2026
16 answers · 9 models
contabo.com/blog/best-llm-gateways
14 answers · 7 models
dev.to/debmckinney/we-evaluated-13-llm-gateways-for-production-heres-what-w…
14 answers · 8 models
beri.net/article/best-llm-gateways-multi-provider-cost-control-2026
11 answers · 8 models

04How they answered

Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
ModelDirect“What is the best LLM gateway for a small B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which LLM observability and routing platform would you recommend to a small business that sells to other businesses?”Comparative“What are the top LLM gateways for a small team and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best LLM gateway for a small company with a tight budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 30 person company evaluating a LLM gateway. What should we look at?”Negative“Which LLM gateways should a small business avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5OpenRouter
Three alternativesBraintrust Gateway, Helicone, LiteLLM
LangfuseChanged
Two alternativesLangSmith, Portkey
LiteLLM, OpenRouter
Two alternativesHelicone, Portkey
LiteLLM
Three alternativesBraintrust Gateway, Helicone, OpenRouter
no first choiceagainst: LiteLLM, OpenRouter, Portkey
GPT-5.4 miniLiteLLM
Two alternativesOpenRouter, Portkey
against: LMCacheLangfuse, OpenRouterChangedOpenRouter, Vercel AI Gateway
Three alternativesCloudflare AI Gateway, Kong AI Gateway, LiteLLM
LiteLLM
One alternativePortkey
against: Kong AI Gatewayno first choicenothing named
Gemini 3.5 FlashPortkey
Four alternativesBifrost, Cloudflare AI Gateway, LiteLLM, OpenRouter
LiteLLMChanged
Two alternativesLangfuse, Portkey
against: HeliconeLiteLLM, OpenRouter
Three alternativesBifrost, Cloudflare AI Gateway, Portkey
Cloudflare AI Gateway, LiteLLM
Two alternativesOpenRouter, Portkey
Cloudflare AI Gateway, Portkey
One alternativeLiteLLM
against: Apigee, Bifrost, Envoy AI Gateway, Kong AI Gateway, LiteLLM, One API
Perplexity SonarLiteLLM
Four alternativesBifrost, Cloudflare AI Gateway, OpenRouter, Portkey
LangfuseChanged
One alternativePortkey
OpenRouter
Five alternativesBraintrust Gateway, Cloudflare AI Gateway, Helicone, LiteLLM, Portkey
LiteLLM
Two alternativesCloudflare AI Gateway, OpenRouter
no first choiceagainst: Cloudflare AI Gateway, Databricks Unity AI Gateway, Kong AI Gateway, OpenRouter, Portkey, TrueFoundry, Vercel AI Gateway
Grok 4.1 FastLiteLLM, OpenRouter
One alternativePortkey
against: HeliconeLangfuseChanged
Two alternativesLangSmith, Portkey
against: FastRouterLiteLLM, OpenRouter
Three alternativesCloudflare AI Gateway, Helicone, Portkey
against: BifrostLiteLLM
Two alternativesCloudflare AI Gateway, OpenRouter
LiteLLM
Three alternativesHelicone, OpenRouter, Portkey
against: Helicone, LiteLLM, OpenRouter
Mistral SmallHelicone, LiteLLM
One alternativeCloudflare AI Gateway
FastRouterChanged
Three alternativesBraintrust, LiteLLM, Portkey
OpenRouter
Four alternativesBifrost, Cloudflare AI Gateway, LiteLLM, Portkey
LiteLLM
Two alternativesCloudflare AI Gateway, OpenRouter
no first choiceagainst: LiteLLM
DeepSeek V4 FlashLiteLLM, Portkey
Two alternativesCloudflare AI Gateway, OpenRouter
against: HeliconePortkeyChanged
Two alternativesLiteLLM, OpenRouter
against: Cloudflare AI Gateway, HeliconeLiteLLM
Four alternativesCloudflare AI Gateway, Helicone, OpenRouter, Portkey
LiteLLM
Two alternativesCloudflare AI Gateway, OpenRouter
LiteLLM
One alternativePortkey
against: LiteLLM, TensorZero
Llama 4 MaverickHelicone, LiteLLMFastRouter, LangfuseChangedLiteLLM
Three alternativesBifrost, Merge Gateway, Portkey
Helicone, LiteLLM, OpenRouterno first choiceagainst: Portkey, TrueFoundry
Qwen 3.7 FlashLiteLLM
Two alternativesOpenRouter, Portkey
RespanChanged
Two alternativesBraintrust, FastRouter
OpenRouter
Four alternativesHelicone, LiteLLM, Merge Gateway, Portkey
LiteLLM
Two alternativesBifrost, Portkey
Portkey
Three alternativesRivet, Superagent, Unify
against: Arize Phoenixnothing named
Kimi K2LiteLLM, Portkeyagainst: HeliconeHeliconeChanged
Two alternativesLangfuse, Portkey
LiteLLM
Three alternativesCloudflare AI Gateway, OpenRouter, Portkey
against: HeliconeLiteLLM
Two alternativesCloudflare AI Gateway, Portkey
LiteLLM
Three alternativesHelicone, OpenRouter, Portkey
against: LiteLLM
GLM 4.7 FlashXLiteLLM
One alternativePortkey
against: OpenRouterPortkeyChanged
Three alternativesHelicone, Langfuse, LiteLLM
LiteLLM
Three alternativesBraintrust Gateway, OpenRouter, Portkey
OpenRouter
Two alternativesHelicone, LiteLLM
no first choice
One alternativeLiteLLM
against: Alibaba Cloud, DeepSeek, MiniMax, Moonshot AI, StepFun, Z.AI
MiniMax M2.5Helicone
Two alternativesLiteLLM, OpenRouter
PortkeyChanged
Four alternativesBraintrust, Helicone, Langfuse, OpenRouter
LiteLLM, OpenRouter
Three alternativesBraintrust Gateway, Helicone, Portkey
LiteLLM
One alternativeOpenRouter
no first choice
Two alternativesCloudflare AI Gateway, TrueFoundry
against: Helicone, LiteLLM, Portkey
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

05The record

One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency. Full answer text is in the free responses file. Download the record
Seventy-two rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
PromptModelVersion stringTime (UTC)SearchedSourcesLatency
Direct recommendationClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:39yes911 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:09yes25 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:50yes1824 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:53yes206 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 12:10yes3919 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 09:31yes54 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 14:02yes1818 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:12yes53 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:18no034 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:11yes1427 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 14:11yes2950 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:33yes1133 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:44yes98 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:08yes35 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:39yes2627 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 11:07yes205 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 10:53yes4616 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:27yes55 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-09-17 13:56yes2336 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:28yes53 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:27yes539 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:16yes1944 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 14:12yes3052 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 14:14yes2155 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:15yes1512 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:27yes87 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:42yes1124 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:05yes207 s
ComparativeGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 11:30yes3016 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:46yes58 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:01yes2826 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:06yes54 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:57yes1029 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:40yes2035 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:58yes3187 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 09:38yes518 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 14:00yes910 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:59yes36 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:06yes1329 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:49yes205 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 13:20yes1814 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:38yes55 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:41yes1414 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:52yes52 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:56yes517 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:02yes2035 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:59yes1558 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 10:36yes958 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:50no06 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:36no010 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:08yes1421 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 12:32yes209 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 13:52yes1511 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 09:24no09 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 10:47yes916 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:02yes53 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:44no041 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:46yes1027 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:04yes1447 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:50yes516 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:16yes188 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:08yes37 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:09yes1624 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:12yes207 s
Negative framingGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 12:52yes3918 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 09:45yes97 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 10:34yes1921 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:29yes54 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:01no040 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:11yes1857 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:42yes3087 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:52yes2547 s

Normalization in this category

Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.

Category-scoped readings
Kong read as Kong AI Gateway
Unresolved, counted raw
LMCache
Lago
MiniMax
Moonshot AI
Ofox
Qwen
Rivet
StepFun
TensorZero
Unify (Unify.ai)
Vercel AI SDK
Z.AI
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.

Also in data platform

The other categories of this function, with the leader in each.
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