Building an LLM API Gateway in Node.js

Short summary

An LLM API gateway centralizes routing, cost tracking, rate limiting, and provider switching between your app code and model providers. The article compares three options — LiteLLM for self-hosted control, Portkey for prebuilt guardrails, and Cloudflare AI Gateway for edge-native deployments — then walks through configuring LiteLLM with Docker, including model routing with fallbacks from GPT-4o to Claude Sonnet. Adding a gateway early avoids painful refactoring when every service has its own bespoke calling convention.

• •LLM API gateways solve governance, cost tracking, and provider switching problems
• •Comparison of LiteLLM, Portkey, and Cloudflare AI Gateway with use-case guidance
• •Hands-on LiteLLM setup with Docker, model routing, and fallback configuration
• •Recommendation: wire up a gateway before writing your first prompt call

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