Bifrost
getmaxim.ailibraryself-hosted
Bifrost is a self-hosted library in the Routing & Gateways layer of the AI stack. High-throughput LLM gateway with drop-in OpenAI compatibility.
By Lattice editorial · Facts verified · method
- licence
- proprietary
- language
- Go
- cost
- free
- owned by
- ML Platform
Verified 2026-09build refuses it from 2027-04
Use Bifrost when
A high-throughput OpenAI-compatible proxy with a small footprint.
Skip Bifrost when
You need the breadth of a full routing stack.
Decides which model answers, and what it costs. — that is what this layer of the stack is answerable for. See the full Routing & Gateways section for the rest of the options.
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[](https://lattice.kunjshah.in/routing-gateways/bifrost)Quick answers
- Is Bifrost open source?
- No. Bifrost is proprietary. It is free to use.
- What are the alternatives to Bifrost?
- The closest alternatives to Bifrost are LiteLLM.
Reading on routing
- The gateway is the productThe interesting engineering is not calling a model. It is deciding which model, failing over safely, and staying inside a budget while you do it.
- Build a cost model before you optimiseTeams optimise the thing they can see in the dashboard. The dashboard shows tokens. The number that matters is cost per successful outcome, and nobody is measuring it.
- Choosing a model is a routing problemThere is no best model. There is a best model for a task, at a quality bar, within a latency and cost budget — and that decision is a routing policy, not a benchmark.
Alternatives to Bifrost
Also in routing
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- MartianMartianModel router that optimizes for quality, cost and latency.Use when Routing tuned on your own traffic rather than a public benchmark.Skip when You want the routing rule to be plain config you can read.proprietary · saas · usage-based
- Envoy AI GatewayEnvoy AI GatewayCNCF-track gateway for LLM traffic on an Envoy data plane.Use when A Kubernetes shop that already runs Envoy and needs the gateway in-cluster.Skip when You want a gateway configurable without a data plane.Apache-2.0 · self-hosted · free
- RouteLLMRouteLLMLearned router that cuts cost by matching difficulty to model size.Use when Cutting cost by matching query difficulty to model size, with a learned router.Skip when You cannot evaluate the quality you would be trading away.Apache-2.0 · self-hosted · free
- Not DiamondNot DiamondRouting and prompt optimisation tuned on your own traffic.Use when Routing and prompt optimisation tuned on your own traffic.Skip when Self-hosting or auditability is a requirement.proprietary · saas · usage-based
- TrueFoundryTrueFoundryGateway plus observability and guardrails as one deployment.Use when Gateway, observability and guardrails as one managed deployment.Skip when You want to adopt the pieces independently.proprietary · managed · subscription