# LLM gateways & spend-tracking tools

> Cut My AI Spend — rank #10 of 10. Typical savings: Ops layer that unlocks methods 2–9. Effort: Low — mostly a proxy swap.

A gateway (LiteLLM, Portkey, OpenRouter) gives you one API across providers plus the control points every other method needs: caching, routing, fallbacks, budgets, rate limits, and per-request cost logging. Spend-tracking layers (Helicone — now maintenance-only after its Mintlify acquisition — nOps, native provider dashboards) add the visibility.
On its own a gateway saves little; as the enforcement point for caching, routing, and attribution it is how the savings become systematic instead of one-off.

## How to do it

1. Route all LLM traffic through one gateway; ban direct provider SDK calls in code review.
2. Turn on request logging with cost metadata from day one.
3. Enable provider fallbacks (resilience) and budget caps (runaway protection).
4. Layer caching and routing policies in the gateway rather than per-app.

## Frequently asked questions

### Which gateway should I pick?

LiteLLM (open-source, self-hosted, 100+ providers) for engineering-led teams; Portkey for managed guardrails and semantic caching; OpenRouter when you want one bill across many model vendors. See our tool reviews for details.


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Canonical: https://cutmyaispend.com/methods/llm-gateways
All methods: https://cutmyaispend.com/ | JSON: https://cutmyaispend.com/api/methods.json