Best LLM Router 2026: AI Gateways & Model Routers Compared
Compare the best LLM routers and AI gateways of 2026. OpenRouter, LiteLLM, Portkey, Requesty, and the one gateway whose privacy you can verify live.
The best LLM router is the one whose privacy claims you can verify with a curl command.
Every router in this comparison does the basics well: one API, many models, failover when a provider drops. OpenRouter popularized the aggregator approach and has a very large catalog. LiteLLM is an open-source proxy you can self-host. Portkey builds deep observability. Requesty optimizes spend. They differ most on one dimension: what happens to your prompt inside the gateway.
TrustedRouter is an OpenAI-compatible AI gateway with 220+ model routes across 30+ providers, including Claude, GPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, Kimi, GLM, and Qwen 3.5. The prompt path runs inside a hardware-attested confidential-compute enclave: the source is open, the image digest is published, and the attestation is checkable live against the running gateway. TrustedRouter never logs or stores prompt or output content.
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(
base_url="https://api-azure.trustedrouter.com/v1",
api_key=TR_KEY,
)
reply = client.chat.completions.create(
model="trustedrouter/auto",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Pick the best route for this."}],
)Meta-routes do the picking
Send trustedrouter/auto and the gateway picks the best fit per request. trustedrouter/cheap finds the cheapest capable route and still runs it in a TEE. trustedrouter/synth fuses a panel of open models and beats single frontier models on published evals.
Failover, with numbers
Automatic provider fallback keeps requests flowing when a provider goes down. Measured latency comes from real routed requests and is published at the latency benchmarks page, so you can check the numbers before you commit.
Credits, BYOK, or a wallet
Prepaid credits through Stripe, bring-your-own provider keys, or x402 pay-per-request with Continue with MetaMask sign-in that works without a traditional account. Per-model pricing is transparent, with a thin markup over provider list prices.
Attestation beats a privacy policy.
Any gateway can publish a policy document. TrustedRouter answers a curl with a JWT signed by the CPU vendor's root key, bound to the live TLS session, with an image digest you can match against the published open-source artifact. Your compliance team can run that check before the first prompt flows, and your CI can run it every day after.
One proof point, anonymized: a document-processing company scaled from zero to over a billion tokens per week through the attested gateway within three weeks of onboarding. Compare smart, cheap, and fast routes at the model chooser, read the OpenRouter deep-dive, or see how end-to-end confidential compute works.
Current routes, prices, privacy, and measured performance.
Catalog facts come from the routes currently configured in TrustedRouter. Performance uses the same cached metadata snapshot as the public leaderboard. Prompts and outputs are not part of these measurements.
| Model | Providers | Context | Input | Output | Privacy | Measured route |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Anthropic: Claude Opus 4.8anthropic/claude-opus-4.8 |
|
1,000,000 | $5.25/1M | $26.25/1M | varies 5 cited scores | 1390 ms TTFT anthropic · 100.00% available · n=4 |
OpenAI: GPT-5.5openai/gpt-5.5 |
|
1,050,000 | $5.25/1M | $31.5/1M | ZDR 3 cited scores | Warming up |
Google: Gemini 3.5 Flashgoogle/gemini-3.5-flash |
+1
|
1,048,576 | $1.575/1M | $9.45/1M | ZDR | measured google-ai-studio · 0.00% available · n=12 |
MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.7 Codemoonshotai/kimi-k2.7-code |
+8
|
262,144 | $0.735/1M to $0.9975/1M | $3.675/1M to $4.2/1M | ZDR 5 cited scores | measured inceptron · 0.00% available · n=11 |
Z.ai: GLM 5.2z-ai/glm-5.2 |
+22
|
1,048,576 | $0.714/1M to $1.575/1M | $1.575/1M to $5.5125/1M | E2EE 4 cited scores | measured engy · 0.00% available · n=57 |
MiniMax: MiniMax M3minimax/minimax-m3 |
+8
|
1,048,576 | $0.2835/1M to $0.63/1M | $1.155/1M to $2.52/1M | ZDR 4 cited scores | 2056 ms TTFT wafer · 100.00% available · n=19 |
Browse every modelReview provider policiesOpen the full leaderboardSnapshot 2026-08-05T01:34:59Z
Questions
What is the best LLM router in 2026?
It depends on what you optimize for. OpenRouter, LiteLLM, Portkey, and Requesty all route one API across many providers, and each has real strengths. TrustedRouter differs on the prompt path: it runs inside a hardware-attested confidential-compute gateway with open source, a published image digest, and a live attestation check. TrustedRouter never logs or stores prompt or output content, and it serves 220+ model routes across 30+ providers.
What is the difference between an LLM router and an AI gateway?
An LLM router picks which model serves each request. An AI gateway is the layer between your app and providers that handles authentication, fallback, and billing. TrustedRouter is both: meta-routes like trustedrouter/auto, trustedrouter/cheap, and trustedrouter/fast pick the model, while the gateway handles automatic provider fallback, prepaid credits, BYOK, and a privacy tier on every route: Open, Zero-Data-Retention, or TEE.
Do I have to rewrite my code to switch LLM routers?
No. TrustedRouter is OpenAI-compatible: change base_url to https://api.trustedrouter.com/v1 and keep your SDK, your model ids, and your code. If you are moving from OpenRouter, the migration is that base_url swap, and the playground at /chat lets you test routes before you move production traffic.
Can an AI gateway be private enough for regulated data?
TrustedRouter's TEE tier runs prompts end-to-end inside confidential compute, so even the serving provider cannot read them, and the attestation is checkable live and bound to the TLS session. TrustedRouter never logs or stores prompt or output content. For compliance review there is a verifiable architecture plus SOC 2 and HIPAA readiness documentation, a DPA, and a BAA; these are readiness documents rather than certifications, so your team can assess them directly.