LiteLLM Freemium

LiteLLM is an open-source gateway that lets you call 100+ LLM providers — OpenAI, Anthropic, Bedrock, Vertex, Groq — through one OpenAI-style interface, with spending limits and logging built in.

What is LiteLLM?

LiteLLM from BerriAI comes in two parts: a Python SDK you import, and a proxy server you run. Both expose the same chat-completions format, so your app talks to one endpoint and LiteLLM routes to whichever model you name. It has become a default building block for teams that refuse to hardcode a single vendor.

LiteLLM features that matter

• 100+ providers: swap gpt-4o for claude-sonnet or bedrock/... by changing a string.
• Virtual keys and budgets: issue per-team keys with hard spend caps.
• Fallbacks and retries: auto-route to a backup model if one fails.
• Logging and cost tracking: export spend and latency to tools like Langfuse.
• Self-hostable: run the proxy in your own VPC.

Product highlights

The budget and key features are why it shows up in production, not just demos. You can hand a developer a key capped at $50/month without exposing the real provider credentials.

It is not a model router with learned quality ranking — routing is rule-based, so you still decide when to use a cheap model versus a flagship one. And self-hosting means you own uptime; the proxy is one more service on your stack.

Who should use LiteLLM

Best for platform teams centralizing LLM access across many apps. Overkill for a solo dev calling one API, where it just adds a hop.

Common use cases

• Central LLM gateway for a whole company.
• Failover between providers to dodge outages.
• Tracking token spend per team or feature.
• Testing the same prompt across five models.
• Giving contractors capped API access.

Pricing and limits

The SDK and self-hosted proxy are free and open-source (MIT). BerriAI sells a managed cloud version with SSO and enterprise controls. Your main cost is the underlying provider tokens plus hosting if you self-run.

Quick Summary

• LiteLLM unifies 100+ LLM providers behind one OpenAI-format API.
• Free and open-source; managed cloud tier available.
• Adds virtual keys, budgets, fallbacks and cost logging.
• Routing is rule-based, not automatically quality-ranked.
• Best for teams managing many models and keys.