{"slug": "bifrost", "name": "Bifrost", "category": "ai", "category_name": "AI models and assistants", "description": "", "recommenders": 4, "commenters": 7, "warners": 0, "score": 4.39, "rising": 1.35, "first": "2026-02-11", "latest": "2026-10-09", "why": "i use this for my personal projects. some features are gated behind a license but the basics like provider proxy, logs, metrics are covered in the free version.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 1, "compare": 2, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "i use this for my personal projects. some features are gated behind a license but the basics like provider proxy, logs, metrics are covered in the free version.", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/maximhq/bifrost", "official_url": "https://github.com/maximhq/bifrost", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Bifrost"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 800387152, "item_id": 50024197, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50024197", "by": "sixdimensional", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it has worked really well and feels pretty solid", "excerpt": "One thing in particular is bifrost[1] as an AI router, and it has worked really well and feels pretty solid. I can route across OpenRouter, native AI providers directly, and even route work to my local AI inference server through tailscale. It makes it very easy to work across providers and platforms. [1] https://github.com/maximhq/bifrost", "context": "", "use_case": "AI router across providers", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 786552484, "item_id": 49159530, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49159530", "by": "Swapnoneel", "date": "2026-08-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Honestly, it is super fast, and I haven\u2019t faced any of the delay issues that were prevalent in LiteLLM.", "excerpt": "So, I recently started using the Hermes agent and hooked it up with Step 3.5 Flash. It\u2019s a cheap and fast model, so I thought it would be enough for my workflow. However, I soon found that it hallucinates during a lot of tasks, and the output quality isn\u2019t something to write home about. On the other hand, using an expensive or frontier-level model means I\u2019ll burn through cash fast. I went down the rabbit hole to find", "context": "", "use_case": "model routing", "switched_from": "LiteLLM", "story": "Is Hermes Agent unusable without a model router?"}, {"id": 783999297, "item_id": 48999956, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48999956", "by": "apatheticonion", "date": "2026-07-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "With Bifrost, I can also create model aliases with custom configuration", "excerpt": "For me, the only utility OpenRouter gives me is billing consolidation - I don't really need the routing capabilities because I use Bifrost for that. As a router, it's not very feature rich. For example I restricted the available models to the ones I want to use however the `/models` endpoint still lists all the models, making my LLM client list the 200+ models available on the service (even though they will throw an ", "context": "", "use_case": "LLM routing and model aliases", "switched_from": "", "story": "Kimi K3 Is Competitive with Fable; Kimi K3 and Fable Is SoTA"}, {"id": 783994739, "item_id": 48999671, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48999671", "by": "apatheticonion", "date": "2026-07-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I self host Bifrost as my LLM gateway", "excerpt": "I love the Chinese models. I use DeepSeek exclusively and now Kimi K3 offers a great planning assistant for more advanced coding tasks. DeepSeek v4 Flash is extremely fast and is able to handle pretty much anything I've thrown at it (I use mostly Rust, PSQL, Angular and Terraform). I self host Bifrost as my LLM gateway, though I wish LLM vendors would do monthly/daily automatic billing (like VPS providers do) rather ", "context": "", "use_case": "LLM gateway", "switched_from": "", "story": "Kimi K3 Is Competitive with Fable; Kimi K3 and Fable Is SoTA"}, {"id": 765647216, "item_id": 47852951, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47852951", "by": "rolls-reus", "date": "2026-04-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "i use this for my personal projects. some features are gated behind a license but the basics like provider proxy, logs, metrics are covered in the free version.", "excerpt": "i use this for my personal projects. some features are gated behind a license but the basics like provider proxy, logs, metrics are covered in the free version. https://github.com/maximhq/bifrost", "context": "", "use_case": "LLM gateway for personal projects", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: GoModel \u2013 an open-source AI gateway in Go; 44x lighter than LiteLLM"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["llm gateway", "ai router across providers", "model routing", "llm routing and model aliases", "llm gateway for personal projects", "ai agent budget control"], "compared": [{"slug": "litellm", "name": "LiteLLM", "co": 2, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "openrouter", "name": "OpenRouter", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "kimi", "name": "Kimi", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48999291", "title": "Kimi K3 Is Competitive with Fable; Kimi K3 and Fable Is SoTA", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49985548", "title": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49471407", "title": "Show HN: We built open OpenRouter that turns usage into a better model", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49159529", "title": "Is Hermes Agent unusable without a model router?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48542100", "title": "Ask HN: Has anyone replaced Claude/GPT with a local model for daily coding?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47849097", "title": "Show HN: GoModel \u2013 an open-source AI gateway in Go; 44x lighter than LiteLLM", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {"compare": 1}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 1, "compare": 1}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 800387152, "item_id": 50024197, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50024197", "by": "sixdimensional", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it has worked really well and feels pretty solid", "excerpt": "One thing in particular is bifrost[1] as an AI router, and it has worked really well and feels pretty solid. I can route across OpenRouter, native AI providers directly, and even route work to my local AI inference server through tailscale. It makes it very easy to work across providers and platforms. [1] https://github.com/maximhq/bifrost", "context": "", "use_case": "AI router across providers", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 791633633, "item_id": 49477102, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49477102", "by": "mongrelion", "date": "2026-08-28", "stance": "compare", "quote": "to compare it with these other products that seem to be competing directly", "excerpt": "Congrats on the launching of your product. I will be taking it for a spin to compare it with these other products that seem to be competing directly with what you have to offer: - https://github.com/ENTERPILOT/GoModel - https://github.com/maximhq/bifrost - https://github.com/BerriAI/litellm Would you care to share what makes experiential different?", "context": "", "use_case": "LLM gateway", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: We built open OpenRouter that turns usage into a better model"}, {"id": 786552484, "item_id": 49159530, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49159530", "by": "Swapnoneel", "date": "2026-08-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Honestly, it is super fast, and I haven\u2019t faced any of the delay issues that were prevalent in LiteLLM.", "excerpt": "So, I recently started using the Hermes agent and hooked it up with Step 3.5 Flash. It\u2019s a cheap and fast model, so I thought it would be enough for my workflow. However, I soon found that it hallucinates during a lot of tasks, and the output quality isn\u2019t something to write home about. On the other hand, using an expensive or frontier-level model means I\u2019ll burn through cash fast. I went down the rabbit hole to find", "context": "", "use_case": "model routing", "switched_from": "LiteLLM", "story": "Is Hermes Agent unusable without a model router?"}, {"id": 783999297, "item_id": 48999956, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48999956", "by": "apatheticonion", "date": "2026-07-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "With Bifrost, I can also create model aliases with custom configuration", "excerpt": "For me, the only utility OpenRouter gives me is billing consolidation - I don't really need the routing capabilities because I use Bifrost for that. As a router, it's not very feature rich. For example I restricted the available models to the ones I want to use however the `/models` endpoint still lists all the models, making my LLM client list the 200+ models available on the service (even though they will throw an ", "context": "", "use_case": "LLM routing and model aliases", "switched_from": "", "story": "Kimi K3 Is Competitive with Fable; Kimi K3 and Fable Is SoTA"}, {"id": 783994739, "item_id": 48999671, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48999671", "by": "apatheticonion", "date": "2026-07-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I self host Bifrost as my LLM gateway", "excerpt": "I love the Chinese models. I use DeepSeek exclusively and now Kimi K3 offers a great planning assistant for more advanced coding tasks. DeepSeek v4 Flash is extremely fast and is able to handle pretty much anything I've thrown at it (I use mostly Rust, PSQL, Angular and Terraform). I self host Bifrost as my LLM gateway, though I wish LLM vendors would do monthly/daily automatic billing (like VPS providers do) rather ", "context": "", "use_case": "LLM gateway", "switched_from": "", "story": "Kimi K3 Is Competitive with Fable; Kimi K3 and Fable Is SoTA"}, {"id": 776733366, "item_id": 48545835, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48545835", "by": "jborak", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "recently set up Bifrost, an LLM gateway, to be the primary access point for the models I serve.", "excerpt": "I'm using 4x RTX 5070's and first-gen AMD threadripper (1950X) to run Qwen3.6 27B (MTP) Q6_K with llama.cpp and it works great as a daily driver with Pi. Around 50-60 toks/sec. I also connect a few other applications to it such as OpenWeb UI and recently set up Bifrost, an LLM gateway, to be the primary access point for the models I serve. I've tried other models such as Qwen3.6 35B A3B and I've found that 27B works ", "context": "", "use_case": "LLM gateway", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Has anyone replaced Claude/GPT with a local model for daily coding?"}, {"id": 765647216, "item_id": 47852951, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47852951", "by": "rolls-reus", "date": "2026-04-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "i use this for my personal projects. some features are gated behind a license but the basics like provider proxy, logs, metrics are covered in the free version.", "excerpt": "i use this for my personal projects. some features are gated behind a license but the basics like provider proxy, logs, metrics are covered in the free version. https://github.com/maximhq/bifrost", "context": "", "use_case": "LLM gateway for personal projects", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: GoModel \u2013 an open-source AI gateway in Go; 44x lighter than LiteLLM"}, {"id": 751601425, "item_id": 46975089, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46975089", "by": "satgate", "date": "2026-02-11", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Bifrost has soft budgets (alerts, no enforcement).", "excerpt": "I've spent 27 years in enterprise cybersecurity \u2014 firewalls, IDS, access control, the usual stack. When I started running AI agents against production APIs last year, I had a familiar feeling: this looks exactly like the early internet before we figured out network security. Agents make outbound calls with real dollar costs attached. The tooling to control that spend mostly comes down to \"set an alert and hope someon", "context": "27 years in enterprise cybersecurity", "use_case": "AI agent budget control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: SatGate \u2013 An economic firewall for AI agent traffic"}]}