Enter your monthly LLM spend and see what 11 AI gateways charge in fees per year. Percentage fees grow with spend: OpenRouter takes 5.5% on Standard-plan credit purchases (8% on Business), Requesty adds a 5% token markup and Cloudflare adds 5% to Unified Billing credits. Flat plans stay level: TrueFoundry Pro at $25 per user, Portkey and LangDB at $49 a month, Helicone Pro at $79, Kong Plus at $125 with one control plane and one model. LiteLLM and Bifrost are $0 open-source cores you host, and Vercel AI Gateway adds no fee to tokens. A $49 flat plan matches 5.5% at $890.91 a month and 5% at $980. Purchase-frequency and usage assumptions are below.
Annual fee cost, by monthly spend
| Platform | Fee structure | Fees per year |
|---|---|---|
| LiteLLM | $0 MIT core; hosting/ops excluded | $0.00 |
| Vercel AI Gateway | No token markup or platform fee; add-ons extra | $0.00 |
| Bifrost | $0 Apache 2.0 open source; hosting/ops excluded | $0.00 |
| TrueFoundry | Pro $25 per user/mo, 1 user; overage excluded | $300.00 |
| Portkey | $49 base, +$9 per extra 100K requests | $588.00 |
| LangDB | Professional $49/mo billed annually, BYOK | $588.00 |
| Helicone | Pro $79/mo; usage-based charges excluded | $948.00 |
| Kong AI Gateway | Plus: $25 control plane + $100 per model, 1 model | $1,500.00 |
| Requesty | 5% token markup | $3,000.00 |
| Cloudflare AI Gateway | 5% on Unified Billing credits; core features free | $3,000.00 |
| OpenRouter | Standard plan, one purchase: 5.5%, min $0.80 | $3,300.00 |
Assumptions: one non-crypto credit purchase per month for the entered credit amount, with OpenRouter fee max(5.5% × credits, $0.80) on its Standard plan (its Business plan charges 8% on credit purchases); Requesty adds 5% to that amount of list-price inference; Cloudflare adds 5% to credits bought through Unified Billing (with your own provider keys its core features are free). Portkey is base-only: $49/month for up to 100k logged requests, then $9 per additional 100k, excluded here. Helicone is the Pro base ($79/month) without its usage-based charges; Kong is the Plus plan with one serverless control plane ($25/month) and one proxied model ($100/month), within the 1 million included requests; TrueFoundry is Pro for one user within 20K requests and tool calls; LangDB is Professional at the annual-billing rate. Vercel AI Gateway charges no markup or platform fee on tokens; payment processing fees and opt-in add-ons are excluded. Tokens are billed separately. LiteLLM and Bifrost hosting and operations are excluded. More credit purchases can raise minimum fees. These are fee-basis comparisons, not equal gross budgets or equivalent products. Sources: OpenRouter pricing, OpenRouter FAQ, Requesty pricing, Portkey pricing, LiteLLM licence, Vercel AI Gateway pricing, Cloudflare AI Gateway pricing, Helicone pricing, Kong pricing, Bifrost pricing, Bifrost licence, TrueFoundry pricing, LangDB pricing. Verified November 2, 2026.
| Monthly spend | 5.5% (OpenRouter) | 5% (Requesty, Cloudflare) | $49/mo (Portkey, LangDB) | $0 core (LiteLLM, Bifrost, Vercel) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $100 / mo | $66 / yr | $60 / yr | $588 / yr | $0 |
| $1,000 / mo | $660 / yr | $600 / yr | $588 / yr | $0 |
| $10,000 / mo | $6,600 / yr | $6,000 / yr | $588 / yr | $0 |
| $40,000 / mo | $26,400 / yr | $24,000 / yr | $588 / yr | $0 |
With these base-only assumptions, $49 / 5.5% = $890.91 of monthly credit purchases and $49 / 5% = $980 of monthly list-price inference. Portkey log overages move both thresholds. OpenRouter BYOK is separate: 5% above $25,000/month list-price inference on Standard and Business (Enterprise allowances are custom); $49 / 5% + $25,000 = $25,980 before log overages. Pareto is a different product: see its token rates and five benchmark scores, not a gateway-fee comparison.
How each fee type scales with spend
The 11 gateways above charge in three ways, and each grows differently as your bill grows.
Percentage fees scale with spend. OpenRouter takes 5.5% when you buy credits on its Standard plan and 8% on Business. Cloudflare applies a 5% fee to credits bought through Unified Billing, so $100 of credit is a $105 charge. Requesty adds 5% to token prices. Double the spend and the fee doubles.
Flat plans stay level up to a usage cap. Portkey Production is $49 a month for 100K requests. LangDB Professional is $49 a month billed annually for 20K logs. Helicone Pro is $79 a month plus usage-based pricing. TrueFoundry Pro is $25 per user per month with 20K requests and tool calls per user, pooled. Kong Plus starts at $25 a month per serverless control plane, plus $100 a month per proxied model, with 1 million requests included. These plans meter requests, logs, users or models, not dollars.
$0 cores charge no fee. LiteLLM's core is MIT-licensed and Bifrost's open-source edition is Apache 2.0, both self-hosted, so the cost moves to your servers and engineering time. Vercel AI Gateway charges no markup and no platform fee on tokens: you buy credits and pay provider list price.
The crossover: when a flat fee beats a percentage
A flat monthly fee F and a percentage fee p cost the same when monthly spend m = F ÷ p. Below that spend the percentage is cheaper; above it the flat plan is. The table applies the formula to the flat plans above, base fees only.
| Flat plan | Per month | Matches 5.5% at | Matches 5% at |
|---|---|---|---|
| TrueFoundry Pro, 1 user | $25 | $454.55 | $500 |
| Portkey Production; LangDB Professional | $49 | $890.91 | $980 |
| Helicone Pro | $79 | $1,436.36 | $1,580 |
| Kong Plus, 1 control plane + 1 model | $125 | $2,272.73 | $2,500 |
Usage caps move these points. Once a flat plan's included volume runs out, overage adds to F: Portkey charges $9 per extra 100K requests, TrueFoundry $20 per extra 100K requests and tool calls, and Kong $200 a month per extra million requests. Per-user and per-model pricing also multiplies F: TrueFoundry with five users is $125 a month, the same base as Kong with one model.
BYOK vs buying credits
Gateways bill in two ways. With credits, you prepay the gateway and it pays the providers; the fee lands on the purchase (OpenRouter, Cloudflare Unified Billing) or on each token (Requesty). With bring your own key (BYOK), your provider bills you directly and the gateway charges only for itself.
BYOK terms differ. OpenRouter's FAQ includes $25,000 a month of list-price inference with no BYOK fee, then 5%; it says BYOK lets you manage rate limits and costs directly with the provider. Vercel charges no markup or fee on BYOK, but BYOK sits on its paid tier, which you reach by purchasing credits. Cloudflare's core features are free whether or not you use Unified Billing. Portkey, LangDB, TrueFoundry and Kong charge for the platform while your providers bill tokens. Helicone's gateway docs offer credits at 0% markup.
What this calculator leaves out
- Token costs. Only gateway fees are priced. Tokens are billed at provider list price through the gateway or by your provider directly.
- Usage overage. Portkey, Helicone, TrueFoundry and Kong charge more past their included volume; every flat row here is the base fee.
- Hosting. LiteLLM and Bifrost show $0 because their open-source cores carry no fee; servers and on-call time are yours.
- Add-ons, logs and payment fees. Vercel's opt-in Custom Reporting costs $0.075 per 1,000 writes and $5 per 1,000 queries, and you pay any payment processing fees on its credits. Cloudflare logs for newer accounts follow Workers Logs pricing. OpenRouter's fee has a $0.80 minimum per purchase, and crypto payments are charged 5%.
- Enterprise contracts. OpenRouter Enterprise allowances, Kong Enterprise and Bifrost Enterprise are priced on request.
- Billing terms. LangDB's $49 is the annual-billing rate; TrueFoundry and Kong scale by user and by model.
Gateway fee FAQ
Which AI gateway has the lowest fees?
On fees alone, four options charge nothing: LiteLLM's MIT core and Bifrost's Apache 2.0 edition when you host them yourself, Vercel AI Gateway, which adds no markup or platform fee to tokens, and Cloudflare AI Gateway's core features when you use your own provider keys. The self-hosted two move the cost to servers and engineering time, which this calculator does not price.
At what monthly spend does a flat-fee gateway beat a percentage fee?
Divide the flat monthly fee by the percentage. A $49 plan matches a 5.5% credit fee at $890.91 of monthly purchases and a 5% fee at $980. Helicone Pro at $79 crosses at $1,436.36 and $1,580; Kong Plus at $125 with one model crosses at $2,272.73 and $2,500. Above those points the flat plan costs less, before usage overage.
Does OpenRouter charge a fee when I bring my own key?
Yes, above an allowance. OpenRouter's FAQ says BYOK includes $25,000 a month of list-price inference with no fee, then 5% of what the same model and provider would cost on OpenRouter. Enterprise allowances are custom.
Do AI gateways mark up token prices?
Most in this calculator say they do not. Requesty adds 5% to token prices. OpenRouter and Cloudflare pass provider rates through and charge their fee on credit purchases instead. Vercel AI Gateway, Helicone's gateway credits and TrueFoundry state no token markup. Portkey, LangDB and Kong charge for the platform while your providers bill tokens.
How current are these gateway prices?
Each row was checked against the vendor's own pricing or licence page on November 2, 2026, and the same figures are published with their source URLs in prices.json. Vendors change plans, so open the linked page before you commit.
The data behind this tool: prices.json · measured-bills.json, both verified and dated.
Compare any two models
List rates and dated competitor measurements: prices and measured bills. Preliminary Pareto 26.10 benchmark costs per task from October 1, 2026 are on the model card. Verbosity: Edition 2.
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