Conclusion
- Direct APIs usually win on lowest raw token price and fewer network hops.
- Gateways win when routing, fallback, budget logs, per-user/per-agent cost attribution, and model diversity save engineering time.
- For production agents, fallback is often more valuable than shaving the last 5-15% of token cost.
- The best architecture can mix both: direct high-volume routes plus gateway fallback for edge cases.
What to do next
- List required model families, regions, and features such as tool calls, JSON mode, images, and embeddings.
- Calculate monthly volume and compare direct unit price against gateway markup.
- Price the engineering time for key management, retries, outage fallback, cost dashboards, and per-feature attribution.
- Run a smoke suite through both direct and gateway routes to compare latency and error shape.
- Start direct if the stack is simple; switch or add a gateway when routing complexity grows.
Recommended paths
| Provider | Free / credits | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Direct DeepSeek | $5 signup / current credit | Lowest-cost coding and reasoning at stable volume |
| Direct Qwen | 70M signup tokens | China-friendly long context and coding |
| OpenRouter | Free model routes | Model marketplace and quick cross-provider tests |
| SiliconFlow | ¥14 + free routes | China-direct open-model platform |
| OpenLLMAPI | Signup credit varies | Unified endpoint with budget logs and fallback |
Global developer checklist
- Confirm whether signup, billing, and API keys work from your country before writing production code.
- Prefer OpenAI-compatible endpoints when you may need to switch models, regions, or providers later.
- Test free credits with a real smoke prompt and record latency, error shape, streaming behavior, and quota burn.
- Keep at least one fallback route for provider outages, model deprecations, and regional access changes.
Production handoff
Need gateway benefits without rewriting your app?
Use one OpenAI-compatible endpoint for provider fallback, cost tracking, and model routing across GPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Qwen, and GLM-style routes.
FAQ
Are LLM gateways always more expensive?
Not always in total cost. Raw tokens may include markup, but fewer integrations, better fallback, and cost logs can reduce engineering and outage cost.
When should I avoid a gateway?
Avoid it when one provider covers your workload, data-handling requirements require direct contracts, or every millisecond and every cent of unit cost matters.
Can I keep direct providers and a gateway together?
Yes. Many teams keep direct routes for high-volume predictable tasks and a gateway for fallback, premium models, experiments, and regional backup.
What should I test before choosing?
Test latency, streaming, tool calls, JSON mode, error handling, retry behavior, invoice/log quality, per-user cost attribution, and model deprecation policy.