Bifrost by Maxim
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 8 LLM gateways by recommenders
Recommended as a fast, lightweight, drop-in OpenAI-compatible router with failover and a free tier; the most common caveat is that advanced features like virtual keys are paywalled.
Recommended as a fast, lightweight, drop-in OpenAI-compatible router with failover and a free tier; the most common caveat is that advanced features like virtual keys are paywalled.
23 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 17
- criticize it
- 6
- approval share
- 74%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 17 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Fast and lightweight
“Honestly, it is super fast, and I haven't faced any of the delay issues that were prevalent in LiteLLM.”
Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “Is Hermes Agent unusable without a model router?” “Bifrost is just a single executable that uses nearly no memory and is lightning fast.”
Comment from 22 Jul 2026 in “Kimi K3 Is Competitive with Fable; Kimi K3 and Fable Is SoTA” “bifrost seems tighter and claims to use way fewer resources”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Litelm: LiteLLM Without the Bloat” - Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Litelm: LiteLLM Without the Bloat”
Configurable, with logs and metrics
“the basics like provider proxy, logs, metrics are covered in the free version”
Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: GoModel – an open-source AI gateway in Go; 44x lighter than LiteLLM” “With Bifrost, I can also create model aliases with custom configuration”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “Kimi K3 Is Competitive with Fable; Kimi K3 and Fable Is SoTA” “a more thorough system with configurability, logging, etc.”
Comment from 28 Mar 2026 in “My minute-by-minute response to the LiteLLM malware attack” Solid, quality software
“It's a quality piece of software, unlike LiteLLM.”
Comment from 19 Oct 2026 in “If you don't run your own LLM proxy, how do you know whats going on?” “it has worked really well and feels pretty solid”
Comment from 9 Oct 2026 in “Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?” Free open source version
“I did some testing on Bifrost just last month on a free open source instance and was able to set up virtual keys.”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “LiteLLM Python package compromised by supply-chain attack” “the basics like provider proxy, logs, metrics are covered in the free version”
Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: GoModel – an open-source AI gateway in Go; 44x lighter than LiteLLM”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Key features paywalled
“fast but many features paywalled”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “Control LLM Spend and Access with any-LLM-gateway” “Virtual Keys is an Enterprise feature. I am not going to pay for something like this”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “LiteLLM Python package compromised by supply-chain attack” Tool definitions break caching or calls
“it injects the list of MCP tools that's available on the proxy-side, it doesn't actually make the call on client's behalf”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Litelm: LiteLLM Without the Bloat” “shuffling the tool definition fields between requests so the prefix cache missed”
Comment from 15 Sep 2026 in “Tuning a Local Coding Agent: Oh My Pi and Qwen3.8-27B on Two RTX 3090s”
Other LLM gateways people recommend
The four most recommended other LLM gateways, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LiteLLM | 72 | 94 | 43% | 12 | — | — |
| Bifrost by MaximThis page | 17 | 6 | 74% | 10 | — | Approved |
| GoModel | 13 | 2 | 87% | 6 | — | Approved |
| Claude Code Router | 11 | 3 | 79% | 5 | — | Approved |
| CLIProxyAPI | 7 | 1 | 88% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
27 of the 28 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It's a quality piece of software, unlike LiteLLM.”
“Bifrost has been decent, despite being partially shareware”
“with a Bifrost multi-model router before just switching”
“it has worked really well and feels pretty solid”
“shuffling the tool definition fields between requests so the prefix cache missed”
“I can largely confirm the numbers from those benchmarks for myself.”
“Bifrost feels very light, though.”
“bifrost seems tighter and claims to use way fewer resources”
“it injects the list of MCP tools that's available on the proxy-side, it doesn't actually make the call on client's behalf”
“get a compatible endpoint with a proxy like Bifrost”
“Honestly, it is super fast, and I haven't faced any of the delay issues that were prevalent in LiteLLM.”
“It's just a single executable.”
“Bifrost is just a single executable that uses nearly no memory and is lightning fast.”
“With Bifrost, I can also create model aliases with custom configuration”
“I am running clusters of DGX Spark machines with BiFrost load balancers in our company and for client projects.”
“the savings compound non-linearly with tool count”
“the basics like provider proxy, logs, metrics are covered in the free version”
“I have personally settled on a mix of Bifrost as my router”
“a more thorough system with configurability, logging, etc.”
“I did some testing on Bifrost just last month on a free open source instance and was able to set up virtual keys.”
“We have tried reaching out to their sales multiple times but never get a response.”
“Virtual Keys is an Enterprise feature. I am not going to pay for something like this”
“Bifrost is the only real alternative I'm aware of”
“Automatic failover Provider down? Rate limited? Bifrost routes to your backup automatically.”
“Bifrost has soft budgets (alerts, no enforcement).”
“Drop-in OpenAI-compatible API means changing providers is literally one line of code.”
“fast but many features paywalled”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.