Envoy Gateway (GenAI) alternatives 2025: Best alternatives
Updated November 2025
If you’re researching Envoy Gateway (GenAI) alternatives, this builder-first guide clarifies what Envoy’s GenAI gateway is (and isn’t), lays out evaluation criteria, and compares the best options. We place ShareAI first for teams that want one API across many providers, transparent marketplace signals (price, latency, uptime, availability) before routing, instant failover, and people-powered economics (70% of spend goes to providers).
What Envoy Gateway (GenAI) is (and isn’t)
What it is. A Kubernetes-native gateway for GenAI traffic built around Envoy Gateway. It standardizes how your services reach LLMs and GenAI APIs, with secure ingress, policy, and OpenTelemetry-friendly observability—so each AI endpoint can be managed as an API.
What it isn’t. A transparent model marketplace that shows live price, latency, uptime, and availability across many providers before you route. Gateways focus on control and observability. Marketplaces focus on choice and route-level performance economics.
Takeaway: If your top requirement is provider-agnostic routing with pre-route transparency and instant failover, pair or replace a gateway with ShareAI. If your top requirement is centralized org policy and observability, a gateway fits that lane.
Aggregators vs Gateways vs Agent platforms
- LLM aggregators (marketplaces). One API across many models/providers with pre-route transparency (price, latency, uptime, availability, provider type), plus smart routing/failover. Good for: faster experiments, cost/UX tuning, switching providers without rewrites.
- AI gateways. Governance at the edge (credentials, scopes, guardrails), quotas/rate limits, and observability. You bring your own providers and accounts. Good for: centralized security, auditability, egress control. Envoy GenAI Gateway is in this category.
- Agent/chatbot platforms. Packaged UX (memory, tools), channels, and team workflows—optimized for end-user assistants rather than provider-agnostic aggregation.
How we evaluated the best Envoy Gateway (GenAI) alternatives
- Model breadth & neutrality — proprietary + open; easy switching; minimal rewrites.
- Latency & resilience — routing policies, timeouts/retries, instant failover.
- Governance & security — key handling, scopes, regional routing.
- Observability — logs/traces and cost/latency dashboards.
- Pricing transparency & TCO — compare real costs before you route.
- Developer experience — docs, SDKs, quickstarts; time-to-first-token.
- Community & economics — whether your spend grows supply (incentives for GPU owners).
Top Envoy Gateway (GenAI) alternatives
#1 — ShareAI (People-Powered AI API)
What it is. A multi-provider API with a transparent marketplace and smart routing. With one integration, browse a large catalog of models and providers, compare price, latency, uptime, availability, and provider type, then route with instant failover. Economics are people-powered: 70% of every dollar flows to providers (community or company) who keep models online.
Why it’s #1 here. If you want provider-agnostic aggregation with pre-route transparency and resilience, ShareAI is the most direct fit. Keep a gateway if you need org-wide policies; add ShareAI for marketplace-guided routing.
- One API → 150+ models across many providers; no rewrites, no lock-in. • Browse Models
- Transparent marketplace: choose by price, latency, uptime, availability, and provider type. • Try it in Playground
- Resilience by default: routing policies plus instant failover.
- Fair economics: 70% of spend goes to providers (community or company). • Create API Key · API Reference · Docs · Releases
For providers: earn by keeping models online. Anyone can become a ShareAI provider—Community or Company. Onboard via Windows, Ubuntu, macOS, or Docker. Contribute idle-time bursts or run always-on. Choose your incentive: Rewards (money), Exchange (tokens / AI Prosumer), or Mission (donate a % to NGOs). As you scale, you can set your own inference prices and gain preferential exposure. • Provider Guide
#2 — Portkey
What it is. AI gateway emphasizing observability, guardrails, and governance—popular with teams that need strong controls and diagnostics.
Best for. Regulated/enterprise environments where governance depth is the top priority. Complements ShareAI when you need deep policy enforcement but also want marketplace-guided routing.
#3 — Kong AI Gateway
What it is. Enterprise AI/LLM gateway—policies/plugins, analytics, and edge observability for AI traffic. A control plane rather than a marketplace.
Best for. Org-wide policy, quotas, and plugin-driven extensions across heterogeneous teams.
#4 — OpenRouter
What it is. A unified API over many models; great for fast experimentation across a wide catalog.
Best for. Quick multi-model access; complements gateways when you need choice more than policy.
#5 — Eden AI
What it is. Aggregates LLMs plus broader AI capabilities (vision, translation, TTS), with fallbacks/caching and batching.
Best for. Teams needing multiple AI modalities in one place with standard controls.
#6 — LiteLLM
What it is. Lightweight Python SDK plus self-hostable proxy that speaks an OpenAI-compatible interface to many providers.
Best for. DIY control when you prefer to operate the proxy yourself and tune retries/fallbacks.
#7 — Unify
What it is. Quality-oriented routing and evaluation to pick better models per prompt.
Best for. Evaluation-driven teams focusing on response quality and prompt-specific selection.
#8 — Orq AI
What it is. Orchestration/collaboration platform that helps teams move from experiments to production with low-code flows.
Best for. Building workflows and multi-step LLM apps where non-engineers collaborate with engineers.
#9 — Apigee (with LLMs behind it)
What it is. A mature API management/gateway you can place in front of LLM providers to apply policies, keys, and quotas.
Best for. Enterprises consolidating API governance under a single umbrella with familiar controls.
#10 — NGINX
What it is. Use NGINX to build custom routing, token enforcement, and caching for LLM backends if you prefer DIY control.
Best for. Teams with infra DNA that want fine-grained control without adopting a separate AI product.
Envoy Gateway (GenAI) vs ShareAI (quick take)
If you need one API over many providers with transparent pricing/latency/uptime/availability and instant failover, choose ShareAI. If your top requirement is egress governance—centralized credentials, policy enforcement, and OpenTelemetry-friendly observability—Envoy GenAI Gateway fits that lane. Many teams pair them: gateway for org policy plus ShareAI for marketplace routing.
Quick comparison
| Platform | Who it serves | Model breadth | Governance & security | Observability | Routing / failover | Marketplace transparency | Provider program |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ShareAI | Product/platform teams needing one API and fair economics | 150+ models, many providers | API keys & per-route controls | Console usage plus marketplace stats | Smart routing + instant failover | Yes (price, latency, uptime, availability, provider type) | Yes — open supply; 70% to providers |
| Envoy Gateway (GenAI) | Teams wanting egress governance on K8s | BYO providers | Centralized credentials/policies | OpenTelemetry metrics/tracing | Conditional routing via gateway policies | No (infra tool, not a marketplace) | n/a |
| Kong AI Gateway | Enterprises needing gateway-level policy | BYO | Strong edge policies/plugins | Analytics | Proxy/plugins, retries | No | n/a |
| Portkey | Regulated/enterprise teams | Broad | Guardrails & governance | Deep traces | Conditional routing | Partial | n/a |
| OpenRouter | Devs wanting one key | Wide catalog | Basic API controls | App-side | Fallbacks | Partial | n/a |
| Eden AI | Teams needing LLM + other AI | Broad | Standard controls | Varies | Fallbacks/caching | Partial | n/a |
| LiteLLM | DIY/self-host proxy | Many providers | Config/key limits | Your infra | Retries/fallback | n/a | n/a |
| Unify | Quality-driven teams | Multi-model | Standard API security | Platform analytics | Best-model selection | n/a | n/a |
| Orq | Orchestration-first teams | Wide support | Platform controls | Platform analytics | Orchestration flows | n/a | n/a |
| Apigee / NGINX | Enterprises / DIY | BYO | Policies | Add-ons / custom | Custom | n/a | n/a |
Pricing & TCO: compare real costs (not just unit prices)
Raw price per 1K tokens hides the real picture. TCO shifts with retries/fallbacks, latency (which affects usage and user patience), provider variance, observability storage, and evaluation runs. A transparent marketplace helps you choose routes that balance cost and UX.
A mental model:
TCO ≈ Σ (Base_tokens × Unit_price × (1 + Retry_rate))
+ Observability_storage
+ Evaluation_tokens
+ EgressPrototype (~10k tokens/day). Optimize for time-to-first-token using the Playground and quickstarts. Mid-scale (~2M tokens/day). Marketplace-guided routing/failover can trim 10–20% while improving UX. Spiky workloads. Expect higher effective token costs from retries during failover; budget for it.
Migration guide: moving to ShareAI
From Envoy Gateway (GenAI) → ShareAI
Keep gateway-level policies where they shine; add ShareAI for marketplace routing and instant failover. Pattern: gateway auth/policy → ShareAI route per model → measure marketplace stats → tighten policies.
From OpenRouter → ShareAI
Map model names, verify prompt parity, then shadow 10% of traffic and ramp 25% → 50% → 100% as latency/error budgets hold. Marketplace data makes provider swaps straightforward.
From LiteLLM → ShareAI
Replace the self-hosted proxy on production routes you don’t want to operate; keep LiteLLM for dev if desired. Compare ops overhead vs managed routing benefits.
From Unify / Portkey / Orq / Kong → ShareAI
Define feature-parity expectations (analytics, guardrails, orchestration, plugins). Many teams run hybrid: keep specialized features where they’re strongest; use ShareAI for transparent provider choice and failover.
Developer quickstart (copy-paste)
The API surface is OpenAI-compatible. Replace YOUR_KEY in the snippets below. Create a key here: Create API Key. See the docs: API Reference and Docs Home.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# cURL — Chat Completions
# Prereqs:
# export SHAREAI_API_KEY="YOUR_KEY"
curl -X POST "https://api.shareai.now/v1/chat/completions" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $SHAREAI_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"model": "llama-3.1-70b",
"messages": [
{ "role": "user", "content": "Give me a short haiku about reliable routing." }
],
"temperature": 0.4,
"max_tokens": 128
}'// JavaScript (fetch) — Node 18+/Edge runtimes
// Prereqs:
// process.env.SHAREAI_API_KEY = "YOUR_KEY"
async function main() {
const res = await fetch("https://api.shareai.now/v1/chat/completions", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
"Authorization": `Bearer ${process.env.SHAREAI_API_KEY}`,
"Content-Type": "application/json"
},
body: JSON.stringify({
model: "llama-3.1-70b",
messages: [
{ role: "user", content: "Give me a short haiku about reliable routing." }
],
temperature: 0.4,
max_tokens: 128
})
});
if (!res.ok) {
console.error("Request failed:", res.status, await res.text());
return;
}
const data = await res.json();
console.log(JSON.stringify(data, null, 2));
}
main().catch(console.error);Security, privacy & compliance checklist (vendor-agnostic)
- Key handling. Rotation cadence; minimal scopes; environment separation.
- Data retention. Where prompts/responses are stored and for how long; redaction defaults.
- PII & sensitive content. Masking; access controls; regional routing for data locality.
- Observability. Prompt/response logging; ability to filter or pseudonymize; propagate trace IDs consistently.
- Incident response. Escalation paths and provider SLAs.
FAQ — Envoy Gateway (GenAI) vs other competitors
Envoy Gateway (GenAI) vs ShareAI — which for multi-provider routing?
ShareAI. It’s built for marketplace transparency (price, latency, uptime, availability, provider type) and smart routing/failover across many providers. Envoy’s GenAI gateway is an egress governance tool (centralized credentials/policy; OpenTelemetry observability). Many teams use both.
Envoy Gateway (GenAI) vs OpenRouter — quick multi-model access or gateway controls?
OpenRouter makes multi-model access quick; Envoy Gateway centralizes policy/observability. If you also want pre-route transparency and instant failover, ShareAI adds one API, live marketplace stats, and resilient routing.
Envoy Gateway (GenAI) vs Portkey — guardrails + observability or Kubernetes-native control?
Portkey emphasizes guardrails, observability, and governance with a unified API; Envoy emphasizes Kubernetes-native gateway control and OTel-friendly traces. ShareAI complements either with marketplace-guided routing and provider choice.
Envoy Gateway (GenAI) vs Kong AI Gateway — two gateways, which when?
Both are gateways (policies, plugins, analytics), not marketplaces. Kong is plugin-rich and enterprise-friendly; Envoy is deeply Kubernetes-native. Teams often pair a gateway with ShareAI for transparent multi-provider routing and failover.
Envoy Gateway (GenAI) vs Traefik AI Gateway — thin AI layer vs K8s-native control?
Traefik AI Gateway adds a thin, AI-focused control layer with specialized middlewares and OTel observability. Envoy offers a Kubernetes-native control plane around Envoy Proxy. For pre-route transparency and instant failover across providers, use ShareAI.
Envoy Gateway (GenAI) vs Eden AI — many AI services or egress control?
Eden AI aggregates several AI services (LLM, image, TTS). Envoy centralizes credentials/policies with AI-aware gateway features. For transparent pricing/latency across many providers, add ShareAI.
Envoy Gateway (GenAI) vs LiteLLM — self-host proxy or managed governance?
LiteLLM is a DIY proxy; Envoy provides managed, Kubernetes-native governance and observability patterns. If you’d rather not operate a proxy and want a marketplace to guide provider selection, choose ShareAI.
Envoy Gateway (GenAI) vs Unify — best-model selection vs policy enforcement?
Unify focuses on evaluation-driven model selection; Envoy on gateway policy/observability. For one API over many providers with live marketplace stats, use ShareAI.
Envoy Gateway (GenAI) vs Orq — orchestration vs egress?
Orq helps orchestrate workflows; Envoy governs egress traffic. ShareAI complements either with transparent provider choice and failover.
Envoy Gateway (GenAI) vs Apigee — API management vs AI-specific egress?
Apigee is broad API management; Envoy is AI-aware egress on K8s. If you need provider-agnostic access with marketplace transparency, add ShareAI.
Envoy Gateway (GenAI) vs NGINX — DIY vs packaged?
NGINX offers DIY filters/policies; Envoy offers a more packaged K8s gateway. To avoid custom Lua and still get transparent provider selection, layer in ShareAI.
