AI Gateway

Top 5 LLM Failover Routing Gateways in 2026

Top 5 LLM Failover Routing Gateways in 2026

TL;DR

LLM failover routing has become critical infrastructure for production AI applications. When providers experience outages or rate limits, applications without failover fail completely. This guide examines five leading solutions: Bifrost by Maxim AI (50x faster with <11µs overhead), LiteLLM (100+ provider support), Cloudflare AI Gateway (edge network), Vercel AI Gateway (frontend-focused), and Kong AI Gateway (enterprise API management). Bifrost excels with zero-config deployment, semantic caching, and deep integration with Maxim's AI evaluation platform.

Overview > Why Failover Routing Matters

Provider outages translate to immediate revenue loss and degraded experiences. Modern AI applications demand five-nines availability (99.999% uptime) as AI agents become embedded in mission-critical workflows. Failover routing automatically redirects requests to healthy providers during outages, maintaining service continuity.

Quick Comparison

Feature Bifrost LiteLLM Cloudflare Vercel Kong
Latency <11µs at 5K RPS 8ms at 1K RPS ~50ms Variable Not specified
Providers 15+ 100+ 20+ 100+ 10+
Open Source ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ✅ Core
Circuit Breaker ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Semantic Cache ✅ ❌ ✅ ❌ ✅
Enterprise SSO ✅ Enterprise tier ❌ ❌ ✅
Best For High-performance production Developer flexibility Cloudflare users Frontend teams API management

AI Gateways > Bifrost by Maxim AI

Bifrost > Platform Overview

Bifrost is a high-performance, open-source LLM gateway built by Maxim AI for production systems. Written in Go, Bifrost delivers <11µs overhead at 5,000 RPS, making it 50x faster than alternatives. Teams deploy production-ready gateways in under 30 seconds with zero configuration.

Bifrost > Key Features

Bifrost > Features > Automatic Failover and Circuit Breaking

Bifrost's circuit breaker detects provider failures in real-time and routes to healthy alternatives within milliseconds. The gateway tracks failure rates, latency, and errors across configured providers, automatically opening circuits when thresholds are crossed.

fallback:
  - model: openai/gpt-4
    providers: [openai_primary, openai_backup]
  - model: anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-5
    providers: [anthropic_primary, anthropic_backup]

Bifrost > Features > Multi-Provider Unified Interface

Unified access to 15+ providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex, Azure, Cerebras, Cohere, Mistral, Ollama, and Groq through a single OpenAI-compatible API:

  • Zero code changes when switching providers
  • Consistent error handling across APIs
  • Unified request/response formats

Bifrost > Features > Semantic Caching

Semantic caching uses embedding-based similarity to identify semantically equivalent requests:

  • cost savings on similar queries
  • Sub-10ms cache response times
  • Configurable similarity thresholds

Bifrost > Features > Load Balancing

Intelligent load balancing across multiple keys and providers using:

  • Round-robin for even distribution
  • Least-latency for performance
  • Weight-based for rollouts
  • Cost-optimized routing

Bifrost > Features > Observability

Built-in observability with:

  • Native Prometheus metrics
  • OpenTelemetry tracing
  • Maxim platform integration for quality monitoring
  • Provider-level success/failure tracking

Bifrost > Features > Enterprise Governance

Governance features include:

Advanced Capabilities

Bifrost > Best For

  • High-throughput production systems (>1,000 RPS)
  • Cost-sensitive deployments needing semantic caching
  • Teams requiring deep observability
  • Organizations needing enterprise governance
  • Multi-agent AI systems with evaluation workflows

Gateways > LiteLLM

LiteLLM > Platform Overview

LiteLLM provides unified access to 100+ LLMs through OpenAI-compatible APIs. Available as Python SDK and proxy server.

LiteLLM > Key Features

  • 100+ provider support
  • Unified output format
  • Retry and fallback logic
  • Cost tracking per project
  • Observability integrations (Lunary, MLflow, Langfuse)
  • MCP and A2A agent gateway support

Gateways > Cloudflare AI Gateway

Cloudflare > Platform Overview

Cloudflare AI Gateway provides centralized management across Cloudflare's global edge network with 20+ provider support.

Cloudflare > Key Features

  • Global edge caching (up to 90% latency reduction)
  • Automatic failover
  • Rate limiting
  • Unified billing
  • Zero Data Retention (ZDR)
  • DLP integration for PII scanning

Gateways > Vercel AI Gateway

Vercel > Platform Overview

Vercel AI Gateway connects to 100+ models through a unified interface for frontend teams using Next.js and React.

Vercel > Key Features

  • Unified model access across 100+ providers
  • AI SDK integration
  • Automatic failover
  • Usage analytics
  • BYOK support

Gateways > Kong AI Gateway

Kong AI > Platform Overview

Kong AI Gateway extends Kong's API gateway platform to support LLM routing with enterprise governance.

Kong AI > Key Features

  • Multi-provider routing (OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Azure)
  • Semantic security with prompt guards
  • Token-based throttling
  • Automated RAG pipelines
  • MCP server generation
  • Plugin ecosystem

Conclusion

Selecting the right LLM failover gateway depends on your requirements. Bifrost delivers unmatched performance with <11µs latency and deep integration with Maxim's AI evaluation platform, ideal for teams building reliable AI systems.

For mission-critical applications, combine Bifrost's high-performance gateway with Maxim's comprehensive evaluation workflows to ensure reliability and quality at scale.

Get started with Bifrost or schedule a demo to see how Maxim accelerates AI development.

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