Should you integrate each AI provider directly, or go through one gateway? Here is an honest comparison to help you decide.
Side by side
| Direct to each provider | RouteAll gateway | |
|---|---|---|
| Keys | One per provider, rotated separately | One sk-ra-... key for all |
| SDKs / formats | Different per provider | One OpenAI-compatible API (+ native Anthropic/Gemini) |
| Switching models | New integration each time | Change the model string |
| Outage handling | You build failover | Automatic routing + failover, never double-billed |
| Prompt caching | Per provider, if supported | Cache-aware billing with discounts |
| Billing | N dashboards, N currencies | One balance, metered, USD / CNY / USDT |
Where a gateway helps most
- You use more than one model. One key and one base URL beats maintaining several integrations and secret sets.
- You care about uptime. Smart routing picks a healthy channel and fails over on upstream errors — in a single request, so you are charged once.
- You want cost control. Per-token and per-call metering is shown on every response; prompt-cache hits are discounted; you top up a prepaid balance instead of reconciling several invoices.
- You build agents or tools. Standard
tool_calls, streaming and vision work across models without per-provider quirks.
When going direct is fine
If you only ever call one provider and don't need failover or unified billing, a direct integration is perfectly reasonable — there's no gateway to add. The value of RouteAll grows with the number of models you use and how much you care about reliability and cost visibility.
The pricing model, briefly
RouteAll prices at or near the upstream official price (with subscriber tiers at official price), and earns its margin from channel cost and prompt-cache savings — not from marking you up. Credits are shown as 1 USD = 10,000 Credits. See pricing & the model marketplace for live numbers.
Try it
Create a free account, make a key, and point any OpenAI client at https://api.routeall.ai/v1. Details in the API docs.