AI Rate-Limit Router 2026: OpenRouter vs LiteLLM vs Portkey
Choosing between OpenRouter vs LiteLLM vs Portkey in 2026? Compare routing, rate-limit fallbacks, cost controls and latency to pick the right AI gateway layer.
Chapter 1: Why the Gateway Layer Became Mandatory in 2026 Three years ago, calling a large language model meant importing one SDK, pasting one API key, and shipping. In 2026 that pattern is a liability. Not because the SDKs got worse — they got better — but because the thing you are calling stopped being a single model behind a single endpoint and became a shifting portfolio of providers, regions, quota tiers, and deprecation calendars. The code that survives contact with production is no longer the code that calls the model. It is the code that decides which model, which...