Head to head · Model routing · October 2026 research run

LiteLLM vs Router.com (Ramp Router)

LiteLLM scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against Router.com (Ramp Router)'s 53.7 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do model routing.

Best model APIs and inference for AI agents · All 830 models comparisons

Which one, for what

LiteLLM B

Best for Teams that want one OpenAI-compatible endpoint over many providers on their own infrastructure, with per-key budgets, model allowlists and an MCP gateway.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 70 against 22
  • Schema & documentation, 91 against 58
  • Security & auth, 72 against 66
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 40
  • Maintenance & community, 82 against 59

Also in its favour

  • Open source

Watch for

litellm 1.82.7 and 1.82.8 on PyPI carried a credential stealer for about 40 minutes on 24 March 2026

Router.com (Ramp Router) D

Best for Teams in the US that want one key for OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI and open-weight models, with routing to cheaper tiers and per-request cost, and can switch off content recording.

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
  • No incidents deducted, where LiteLLM loses 12 points for them

Watch for

Ramp-side content recording is on by default and keeps prompts, outputs and tool calls for one year

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Reliability LiteLLM +48

LiteLLM 70

Read with the local-software lines, since the gateway runs on the operator's hardware and BerriAI hosts nothing an agent calls. litellm on PyPI states Python 3.10 to 3.14, and the gateway ships as a Docker image, a Helm chart and Terraform modules, with GHCR images signed by cosign (20). 51 GitHub Actions workflows plus a CircleCI config cover unit, proxy-database, end-to-end, chaos, mutation and UI tests. The GitHub API was rate-limited for our reader on 6 November and Actions pages refused it on 6 October, so we couldn't confirm main is passing (15 of 25). The issue tracker showed 1,674 open issues on 6 November, with eight bug reports among the 15 newest, seven of them with a reply, against a project that tags several releases a day (10 of 25, down from an unchecked 12). Release notes carry breaking-change bullets, but breaking changes land in weekly minor releases on the 1.x line, so version numbers don't signal them (10 of 15). 1.108.1, past 1.0 (15).

Router.com (Ramp Router) 22

Hosted reading. No status page found. status.router.com still does not resolve on 4 November, router.com/status answers 404, and neither the docs nor router.com link one (0). No readable incident history (5). No request or token rate limits are published. The docs say limits vary by model and list only technical limits, a 100 MiB body, 15 candidates and 100 keys per user (0). The errors page passes through provider retry-after and retry-after-ms, tells clients to respect them, gives a retry or fallback action for every 4xx and 5xx code, says retrying a 501 unchanged won't help and that a failed fallback candidate is not retried, and the fallbacks guide says truncated attempts are billed on top of later attempts. No idempotency key exists for the generation call that starts billing, so this is safe-retry guidance without keys (12). No SLA found in the docs or on router.com (0). The public API carries no beta label in the docs, and the docs llms.txt, re-read on 4 November, still says to treat 'beta pricing, limits, and enterprise controls as subject to change'. A 27 October reading of Ramp's product schedule came from the legal site's script and is no longer counted, so the line keeps its earlier partial value (5 of 10). 0 + 5 + 0 + 12 + 0 + 5 = 22.

Schema & documentation LiteLLM +33

LiteLLM 91

Every gateway serves Swagger at /, ReDoc at /redoc and the raw schema at /openapi.json, and the docs host a public Swagger explorer (25). llms.txt, llms-full.txt and a Markdown twin of every page via .md (10). Pages say what a feature is for and where its limits are, and the key-auth page explains how permissions are inherited and where they aren't, but the reference is very large for a model to navigate (16 of 20). OpenAI-shaped request schemas from Pydantic models, with metadata, litellm_params and config blocks left as free-form objects (10 of 15). A full error reference with the envelope, every status, response headers and how to tell gateway limits from provider limits, plus examples on every page (15). Release notes per version with dates, newest v1.108.0 and v1.106.7 on 4 November 2026 (15).

Router.com (Ramp Router) 58

Router, scored on the API lines. No OpenAPI or other machine-readable contract found. /openapi.json on docs.router.com returns the docs app shell. The API follows the OpenAI and Anthropic wire formats, which this checklist doesn't credit to a router, the same reading as RouterPlus (0 of 25). llms.txt and a Markdown copy of every page at the same path with .md (10). Pages say which endpoint to prefer and why, what isn't served (embeddings, files, batches), which Chat Completions controls return 501, and which workload suits which job (17 of 20). Router-only fields are tabled with types and bounds, the route selector rules are stated (model or models but never both, 1 to 15 candidates), over-limit timeouts are a 400 naming the maximum, and the model list documents a typed router object with a schema_version. Request bodies otherwise follow the upstream formats (12 of 15). curl, OpenAI SDK, Anthropic SDK, LangChain, Vercel AI SDK, LlamaIndex and Pydantic AI examples, and an error reference with a status, code and action for each case (15). Paths sit under /v1 and the model object is versioned, but no API changelog or dated release notes were found (4 of 15).

Maintenance & community LiteLLM +23

LiteLLM 82

v1.108.1 tagged on 5 November 2026, v1.108.0 and v1.106.7 on 3 and 4 November (30). 125 tags between 8 August and 6 November, stable, patch, release-candidate and dev builds, with patch releases for four minor lines at once (20). Reply times not measured. On the issues page 7 of the 15 newest had a reply on the day, workflows auto-close duplicates and label issues, and Discord is the listed community channel (12 of 25). The package is the official SDK, current, with OpenAI and Anthropic SDKs working against the gateway (12 of 15). Dependency and image scanning (OSV, zizmor, Scorecard, grype) run in CI, with pass state unchecked (8 of 10).

Router.com (Ramp Router) 59

Router, read on the model lines for a closed service. The Ramp CLI that ships the router commands tagged v0.2.91 on 3 November 2026, a release that changes router.py and router_credentials.py, one of 81 tags since 6 August (30). Models carry a deprecated status and the docs list deprecated and retired models, but no notice period is stated, and the Baseten retirement note gives no date and says requests aren't redirected (4 of 12). Provider-specific Baseten ids and several Fireworks models were retired without dates. The API host moved from router-api.ramp.com to api.router.com, and the old host still answers (3 of 8). No public API changelog. Support is a dashboard button and router@ramp.com, not tested (5 of 15). ramp-cli issue replies were not read, because GitHub's API wasn't available to this session (3 of 10). No API SDK. The Ramp CLI (MIT, npm @ramp/router and @ramp/cli, tagged v0.2.91 in the repository, Homebrew; npm itself not read) sets up agents and keys (7 of 15). The CLI repository has CI, build, npm and router-integration workflows and a tests folder, with 46 commit days since 29 July. ci.yml runs cargo test and pytest on pushes to main, and the results were not readable (7 of 10).

Payments & pricing LiteLLM +20

LiteLLM 60

Read with the self-hosted rule, since an agent uses the free gateway and Enterprise is a sales-led licence for the same software. No x402, MPP or L402 (0). MIT with no account and no card, so 20, 20 and 20 on the last three lines. Model calls cost what the operator's provider keys cost.

Router.com (Ramp Router) 40

No x402, MPP or L402 in any of the 41 docs pages. Calls draw on account credit (0). Per-token prices for every model are public at router.com/models and in the supported-models page without a login (20). Router.com says routing is free through 2026 and the first $26 of credits are free, and BYOK requests carry no Router charge. We did not sign up to confirm that no card is asked for (20). A person signs up in the browser with a US business email or Sign in with Ramp, and the CLI creates keys only after browser approval (0).

Security & auth LiteLLM +6

LiteLLM 72

Read with the tool checklist for self-hosted software. Virtual keys are hashed, revocable and blockable, with model, route, MCP server, budget, rate and expiry limits, and a proxy_admin_viewer read-only role exists. Rotation with a grace period is Enterprise only, so 25, less 10 because the docs pass a key as ?key= on /key/info and on the Claude Code marketplace manifest (15 of 30). allowed_routes, MCP permissions by key and team, an approval queue for submitted MCP servers and stdio MCP servers off by default from 1.104.0 (15 of 20). Guardrails can run before a model call and on MCP tool results, and an OWASP LLM Top 10 page maps each risk to a control, but prompt-injection detectors such as Lakera need an Enterprise licence and all of it is off by default (12 of 15). Request and spend logs per key in the open-source build; audit logs of admin actions are Enterprise only (12 of 15). security.md with GitHub private reporting, a bug bounty from $500 to $3,000 for P0 and P1 reports, a security announcements list, SOC 2 Type II per the data security page, CodeQL, OSV and Scorecard workflows, and advisories published on GitHub. No security.txt, and reports without a video are closed unread (18 of 20).

Router.com (Ramp Router) 66

Router, read on the model lines. Router keys are shown once, can expire, carry lifetime or periodic spend caps, can be locked, unlocked or revoked, and each key has its own model set and default workload. No permission scopes or programmatic rotation were found (24 of 30). The docs FAQ says Ramp-side content recording is on by default and keeps inputs, outputs and tool calls for one year for debugging, semantic analysis and product improvement, with detected personal data removed before product use. Provider training terms are in Ramp's Provider Schedule, which renders only with JavaScript. Its 27 October reading came from the legal site's script and is no longer counted, so the line is held (6 of 20). Recording can be switched off account-wide, propagating asynchronously and without deleting existing archives, and flagged content may still be kept up to 30 days. The docs FAQ points to the Provider Schedule for zero data retention policies and exceptions, which could not be read, so the line is held (10 of 15). Logs show model, provider, status, tokens, cost, latency, fallback candidates, credential source and routing decisions per request, with usage export to S3 for Router Admins (14 of 15). A valid security.txt on router.com points to Ramp's security address. Ramp's SOC 2 and ISO 27001 reports, per the ramp listing's 8 October check, were not shown to cover Router, which is a separate product under its own terms. No bug bounty found (12 of 20).

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLiteLLMRouter.com (Ramp Router)Edge
Reliability16%207022LiteLLM +48
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.29158LiteLLM +33
Agent ergonomics13%16.27977LiteLLM +2
Security & auth14%17.57266LiteLLM +6
Payments & pricing10%12.56040LiteLLM +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88259LiteLLM +23
Transparency & trust7%8.86364Router.com (Ramp Router) +1
Negative events≤15-120
TotalB 62.4/100D 53.7/100

Facts side by side

FactLiteLLMRouter.com (Ramp Router)
KindModel routerModel router
VendorBerriAIRamp
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://api.router.com/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumPay per use
x402nono
LicenceMIT, except the enterprise/ directory, which is under its own licence and needs an Enterprise licence keyClosed service under the Router Terms of Service (last updated 31 August 2026). The Ramp CLI that configures coding agents for Router is MIT.
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-11-052026-11-03
Terms last updatedno document linkedcouldn't be read
Privacy policy last updatedno date givencouldn't be read
Customer content may train modelsnot read yetcouldn't be read
Terms restrict automated accessnot read yetcouldn't be read
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot read yetcouldn't be read
Terms or service can change without noticenot read yetcouldn't be read
Arbitration or class-action waivernot read yetcouldn't be read
Popularity63k stars, 22.5M PyPI/wk1.7k npm/wk

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

LiteLLM

An MIT-licensed gateway that puts 100+ model providers behind one OpenAI-compatible API, with virtual keys, budgets, fallbacks and an MCP gateway, released several times a week. Its security record is the main limitation. Two PyPI releases carried a credential stealer on 24 March 2026, and 30 GitHub advisories followed in 12 months, five of them critical.

Router.com (Ramp Router)

Detailed Markdown docs with typed error codes, per-model capability data and routing an agent can set per request. No OpenAPI document, status page, changelog or published rate limits were found. Signup needs a US business email in a browser, and Ramp records prompts and outputs for a year by default unless switched off.

Before you call either

LiteLLM

  1. Pin an exact litellm version or image digest, verify the cosign signature, and never install an unpinned latest in CI
  2. Give each agent a virtual key limited to its models, routes and MCP servers, with a budget and an expiry
  3. Treat a 429 with retry-after as the gateway's own limit and wait that long; a 429 without it came from the provider
  4. Set NO_DOCS, NO_REDOC and NO_OPENAPI to True in production, and use the -non_root image variant
  5. Set LITELLM_LOCAL_MODEL_COST_MAP=True where egress is blocked, since start-up otherwise fetches the price map from GitHub

Router.com (Ramp Router)

  1. Switch off content recording in Settings before sending private data. It is on by default and keeps prompts and outputs for a year
  2. Read model ids from GET /v1/models at runtime. Ids are account-specific, an unknown one is a 404, and Gemini ids need your own Google key
  3. Use POST /v1/responses with a models list for fallbacks. Router stops falling back once a stream has started
  4. Set fallback_timeout and provider_timeout, or allow_flex_tier: false, when latency matters. Flex routing is on by default
  5. Treat both 401 invalid_api_key and 401 api_key_deactivated as a possibly locked key, and stop retrying on 402

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, LiteLLM or Router.com (Ramp Router)?

LiteLLM scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against Router.com (Ramp Router)'s 53.7 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

Do LiteLLM and Router.com (Ramp Router) need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call LiteLLM and Router.com (Ramp Router) without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for LiteLLM. Router.com (Ramp Router) has a hosted endpoint at https://api.router.com/v1.

Are LiteLLM and Router.com (Ramp Router) open source?

LiteLLM is open source (MIT, except the enterprise/ directory, which is under its own licence and needs an Enterprise licence key). No open-source release is listed for Router.com (Ramp Router).

Other comparisons with LiteLLM or Router.com (Ramp Router)

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