Bifrost
High-performance open-source LLM gateway from Maxim AI providing a unified OpenAI-compatible API for 1000+ models across 23+ providers, with automatic fallbacks, load balancing, MCP support, and sub-100µs overhead at 5,000 RPS.
Overview
Bifrost is an open-source, high-performance AI gateway from Maxim AI, written in Go and licensed under Apache 2.0. It unifies access to 1000+ models across 23+ providers — including OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex, Azure, Cohere, Mistral, Groq, and Ollama — behind a single OpenAI-compatible API. Bifrost adds automatic provider fallbacks, load balancing, semantic caching, virtual key management, budgeting, an MCP gateway for centralized tool management, and built-in OpenTelemetry observability. It is engineered for speed, adding roughly 11 microseconds of overhead at 5,000 requests per second and serving as a drop-in SDK replacement for existing applications.
The Verdict
Who Should Use Bifrost?
Best For
- Teams running high-throughput production traffic that need minimal gateway latency
- Multi-provider deployments wanting automatic failover and load balancing
- Organizations needing self-hosted governance, budgeting, and virtual keys
- Agent builders who want a centralized MCP gateway for tool management
- Teams already on the OpenAI SDK seeking a drop-in multi-provider swap
Not Ideal For
- Single-provider apps with no routing or failover needs
- Teams wanting a fully managed gateway with no self-hosting
What's Great
- Extremely low overhead — ~11µs added latency at 5,000 RPS, benchmarked as 50x faster than LiteLLM
- Unified OpenAI-compatible API across 23+ providers and 1000+ models
- Automatic fallbacks and load balancing for high uptime
- Built-in MCP gateway, virtual keys, budgeting, and OpenTelemetry observability
- Fully open-source (Apache 2.0) and self-hostable
Watch Out For
- Self-hosted deployment requires managing your own infrastructure
- Newer project (launched 2025) with a smaller community than established gateways
- Published benchmarks are vendor-run; validate against your own workloads
Pricing
View all features & details
Key Features
- Unified OpenAI-compatible API for 1000+ models
- Automatic provider fallbacks and adaptive load balancing
- MCP gateway for centralized tool management
- Virtual key management and budget/cost tracking
- Semantic caching to reduce cost and latency
- Built-in OpenTelemetry observability
- Drop-in SDK replacement for existing apps
- Cluster mode for horizontal scaling
Platforms & Providers
- Written in Go, Apache 2.0 licensed
- OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex, Azure
- Cohere, Mistral, Groq, Cerebras, Ollama, and 13+ more
- Self-hosted via Docker / Kubernetes
How It Compares
| Feature | Bifrost | LiteLLM Proxy | Portkey |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Source | Yes (Apache 2.0) | Yes | Partial |
| Providers | 23+ (1000+ models) | 100+ providers | 250+ |
| Added Latency @ 5K RPS | ~11µs | Higher | N/A |
| MCP Gateway | Built-in | Partial | Yes |
| Load Balancing | Built-in | Built-in | Yes |
| Best For | High-throughput, low-latency routing | Multi-provider routing | Enterprise features |