Envoy AI Gateway vs OpenRouter
Envoy AI Gateway
aigateway.envoyproxy.io
OpenRouter
openrouter.aiSide by side
| Figure | Envoy AI Gateway | OpenRouter |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 4 |
| Spec score · LLM Gateway Software | 8.4 (#8) | 7.7 (#17) |
| Spec score · LLM gateways | 8.4 (#10) | 7.8 (#20) |
| Spec score · Byok System | 8.4 (#8) | 7.5 (#18) |
| Founded | 2024 | 2023 |
| Intended users | The documentation identifies teams sharing models or tools, seeking centralized credentials, quotas, usage attribution, or failover as likely users. | The pricing page describes its plans as serving indie hackers, AI-native startups, growing teams, and enterprises. |
| Support | The project directs users to its community Discord and GitHub issues for help. | OpenRouter directs users to its help center, support ticket form, documentation, and community Discord; pricing lists community, email, or dedicated support according to plan. |
Plans
In their own words
Envoy AI Gateway
Envoy AI Gateway, now named Agent Router, is an open-source control plane for managing AI and agent traffic through Envoy. It provides an OpenAI-compatible API for hosted and self-hosted models and MCP servers, with integrations for providers including OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Google Gemini, AWS Bedrock, Mistral, and Anthropic. Traffic controls include model virtualization, provider failover, token quotas, and usage-based rate limiting. Its MCP gateway supports server multiplexing, tool routing, OAuth authentication, and observability; InferencePool support adds routing and load balancing for inference endpoints. Credentials can be managed centrally, and supported short-lived credential flows include AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, and GCP Vertex AI. The project describes metrics collection and monitoring for AI workloads. The free open-source project is listed at free. Its CLI supports local use on Linux and macOS; production Kubernetes deployment uses Envoy Gateway and requires compatible dependencies. The project uses the Apache 2.0 license and points users to Discord and GitHub issues for help.
OpenRouter
OpenRouter has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.