# Arcjet vs LiteLLM

Arcjet records 38,973 monthly visits with -29.2% month-over-month growth and Free Trial, Paid, Contact for Pricing pricing. LiteLLM records 576,967 monthly visits with +7.9% growth and Freemium, Contact for Pricing pricing.

| Metric | [Arcjet](https://openaitools.app/tool/arcjet) | [LiteLLM](https://openaitools.app/tool/litellm) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Website URL | https://arcjet.com | https://litellm.ai |
| Categories | AI Agent, AI Developer Tools, AI API, AI Workflow | AI API, Large Language Models (LLMs), AI Developer Tools, Open Source AI Models |
| Pricing Model | Free Trial, Paid, Contact for Pricing | Freemium, Contact for Pricing |
| Monthly Visits | 38,973 | 576,967 |
| MoM Growth Rate | -29.2% | +7.9% |
| Primary Market | United Kingdom | United States |
| Direct Visits | 23,705 | 228,967 |
| Review Score | 4.4 | 4.8 |
| Saved Count | 0 | 5 |
| Supported Platforms | Website | Website |

## Arcjet

Arcjet started life as a developer-friendly security layer for web applications and has expanded into runtime security for AI agents. Instead of only checking identity at the door, it evaluates every step an agent takes: which tool is being called, with which typed arguments, by which actor, and in the context of the steps that came before. That lets teams stop unauthorized refunds, unexpected data access, runaway token spend and sequence drift that no single step would have flagged on its own.

The platform combines classic application protections - WAF, bot detection, rate limiting, signup form protection and email validation - with agent-specific controls such as prompt injection detection, tool and MCP authorization, sensitive information detection and data loss prevention. Detection for sensitive data can run locally in your environment so regulated payloads never leave your infrastructure, while decisions and policy versions stream out to SIEM tools like Splunk, Datadog, Panther and Cribl for evidence.

Arcjet ships SDKs for JavaScript and Python ecosystems (Next.js, Astro, Express, Fastify, NestJS, Nuxt, SvelteKit, Hono, Flask, FastAPI, Bun, Deno and more) plus integrations for agent frameworks including LangChain, LangGraph, CrewAI, Google ADK, Mastra, OpenAI Agents, Vercel AI SDK and the Claude Agent SDK. It also offers an MCP server, a CLI and skills for coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex and Cursor. A free trial is available, with paid plans and custom/enterprise pricing on request.

**Pricing & Plans:** Free trial available, then paid plans with custom pricing for larger deployments. Enterprise and volume pricing is quoted on request. Check the official pricing page for current tiers and usage limits.

- **Agent action policy enforcement:** Wrap agent tool calls and get a typed decision - allow, block, redact or hold for review - before the tool actually executes, based on actor, role, route and typed inputs.
- **Prompt injection detection:** Screen user input, fetched web pages, API responses and tool output for hostile instructions before anything reaches the model context.
- **Sensitive information and DLP:** Detect and strip names, addresses, national IDs, bank and card numbers before they reach model context, logs or third-party tools, with optional in-process local detection.
- **Web app protections:** Bot protection, WAF rules, rate limiting, signup form protection and email validation to keep public endpoints and signup flows clean.
- **Audit and observability:** Every decision, policy version and actor is retained as evidence and streamed to Splunk, Datadog, Panther, Cribl or your own analytics warehouse, with OpenTelemetry agent traces.

**Strengths:** Evaluates the whole agent run, not just a single request, which catches sequence drift and multi-step abuse; Detection can run in-process so sensitive data does not have to leave your environment; Broad SDK and agent-framework coverage, including an MCP server, CLI and coding-agent skills; Decisions and policy versions stream to common SIEM and observability stacks for compliance evidence

**Limitations:** Requires code changes inside your application rather than a purely network-level gateway deployment; The breadth of controls and frameworks means a real learning curve for smaller teams; Advanced enterprise governance and custom retention options are quote-based rather than self-serve

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/arcjet.md)

## LiteLLM

LiteLLM is an open-source AI gateway and Python SDK designed to remove vendor lock-in from LLM applications. The SDK lets you call models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Vertex AI, Bedrock, Mistral, Azure and dozens of other providers using the same OpenAI-style request format, so switching models is a configuration change rather than a code rewrite. The same project ships an AI Gateway (often called the proxy) that turns that abstraction into a shared service for an entire organization.

That gateway is where most platform teams find the value. It issues virtual keys scoped by team, project or application, tracks spend per key against budgets, applies rate limits (TPM and RPM), and exposes dashboards for request volume, token usage and cost per model. Routing features include load balancing across deployments, automatic fallbacks when a provider fails, retries and budget-based rerouting, plus guardrails for PII masking, prompt-injection detection and secret detection.

The project is genuinely open source with the code on GitHub (BerriAI/litellm) and a very active community. Enterprise features add SSO, audit logs, and support for agents and MCP servers through the same gateway. Notably, LiteLLM supports day-zero access to new models so teams can adopt them as soon as they ship, and it can also serve self-hosted, fine-tuned and internal models behind the same key. Companies cited on the site include NVIDIA, Netflix, Okta, Lemonade and AT&T.

**Pricing & Plans:** Freemium and open source. The self-hosted LiteLLM gateway and SDK are free under an open-source licence, and a free tier lets you get started immediately. Enterprise plans with SSO, audit logs, SLAs and advanced support are quoted on request via the sales team.

- **OpenAI-compatible API for 100+ LLMs:** Call 100+ providers and 1,800+ models using one request format, so you can swap models without changing application code.
- **Virtual keys, teams and budgets:** Issue scoped keys per team, project or app, set monthly spend caps and see exactly who is driving usage and cost.
- **Routing, load balancing and fallbacks:** Distribute traffic across deployments, retry on failure and automatically fall back to another model or provider when one goes down.
- **Observability and spend tracking:** Dashboards for request volume, tokens and cost per model, with support for logging and analytics integrations.
- **Guardrails and policy controls:** Plug in PII masking, prompt-injection detection and secret-detection guardrails, and manage policies centrally instead of in every app.

**Strengths:** Truly open source with a large GitHub community and self-hosting option; Very broad provider coverage with an OpenAI-compatible interface; Enterprise-grade controls: virtual keys, budgets, rate limits and audit logs; Day-zero support for new models and easy fallback when providers fail

**Limitations:** Self-hosting means you own deployment, upgrades and uptime; Feature depth varies between the free open-source version and enterprise plan; The breadth of configuration options can be overwhelming for small projects

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/litellm.md)

## Frequently Asked Questions

### How do Arcjet and LiteLLM compare in monthly traffic?

Arcjet has 38,973 monthly visits, while LiteLLM has 576,967. Traffic estimates describe audience size, not product quality.

### How do their growth rates compare?

Arcjet has a month-over-month growth rate of -29.2%; LiteLLM has +7.9%.

### How does pricing compare?

Arcjet: Free Trial, Paid, Contact for Pricing. Free trial available, then paid plans with custom pricing for larger deployments. Enterprise and volume pricing is quoted on request. Check the official pricing page for current tiers and usage limits. LiteLLM: Freemium, Contact for Pricing. Freemium and open source. The self-hosted LiteLLM gateway and SDK are free under an open-source licence, and a free tier lets you get started immediately. Enterprise plans with SSO, audit logs, SLAs and advanced support are quoted on request via the sales team.

## Alternatives

| # | Tool Name | Monthly Visits | MoM Growth Rate | Pricing Model | Summary | Profile (Markdown) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 1 | [OpenRouter](https://openaitools.app/tool/openrouter-ai) | 19,941,437 | -6.2% | Paid | Provides a massive hosted model catalog with instant access, but requires trusting a third-party platform instead of self-hosting. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/openrouter-ai.md) |
| 2 | [Composio](https://openaitools.app/tool/composio) | 2,782,603 | +22.8% | Freemium, Contact for Pricing | Give your AI agents secure, authenticated access to 1,700+ apps | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/composio.md) |
| 3 | [Together AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/together-ai) | 1,645,930 | +64.9% | Freemium, Paid | Hosts high-performance open-weight models directly on dedicated serverless infrastructure, but does not route across external providers. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/together-ai.md) |
| 4 | [OrcaRouter](https://openaitools.app/tool/orcarouter) | 975,300 | -5.2% | Freemium | Delivers automated model failover and budget governance through an API gateway, but with less open-source customization. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/orcarouter.md) |
| 5 | [BLACKBOX.AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/blackbox-ai-1) | 622,975 | -27.2% | Free Trial, Paid | High-trust frontier inference, encrypted end to end | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/blackbox-ai-1.md) |
| 6 | [ZenMux](https://openaitools.app/tool/zenmux) | 444,394 | +16.7% | Freemium, Paid | Unified LLM gateway with failover and analytics, but offers less robust open-source developer SDK support. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/zenmux.md) |
| 7 | [Augment Code](https://openaitools.app/tool/augment-code) | 326,215 | +24.1% | Freemium, Free Trial, Contact for Pricing | Agent orchestration platform for your whole software development lifecycle | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/augment-code.md) |
| 8 | [Mastra](https://openaitools.app/tool/mastra) | 318,954 | -5% | Freemium, Contact for Pricing | The TypeScript framework for building, deploying, and observing AI agents | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/mastra.md) |
| 9 | [Merge](https://openaitools.app/tool/merge-dev) | 313,201 | +1.7% | Freemium, Contact for Pricing | The universal context engine connecting agents to data, tools, and models | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/merge-dev.md) |
| 10 | [Pipedream](https://openaitools.app/tool/pipedream) | 312,216 | -14.3% | Freemium, Paid, Contact for Pricing | Managed auth and 10,000+ tools for the agents you're building | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/pipedream.md) |

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Source: https://openaitools.app/compare/arcjet-vs-litellm

More Markdown: [Categories](https://openaitools.app/categories.md) · [Traffic rankings](https://openaitools.app/rankings.md) · [llms.txt](https://openaitools.app/llms.txt)
