Braintrust alternative

AIgateway: the best Braintrust alternative in 2026

The best Braintrust alternative in 2026 is AIgateway. Braintrust is primarily an eval platform that proxies upstream providers. AIgateway makes evals a gateway primitive — eval results bind directly to routing aliases — and covers every modality with a first-party catalog, not just upstream pass-through.

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Feature comparison

AIgateway vs Braintrust

Side-by-side on the dimensions that move a production decision.

Feature

AIgateway

Braintrust

Evals as gateway primitive

Yes — binds to routing aliases

Yes, but separate from routing

First-party catalog

100+ models, every modality

Pass-through proxy

Seat fees

None

Yes

Replay + shadow A/B

Yes on any logged request

Yes, with glue code

Sub-account API

Yes

Limited

Video / voice / music routing

Yes

Feature comparison reflects public documentation as of 2026. Braintrust pricing shape: Seat-based eval platform plus proxied inference fees.. Catalog: Proxies upstream providers; no first-party multi-modal catalog..

Migrate in 5 minutes

Three steps. One base URL.

If you're on Braintrust through the OpenAI SDK, you're 90% of the way there. Change the base URL and the key.

STEP 01

Sign up for AIgateway

Create an account at aigateway.sh/signin and copy an sk-aig-... key from the dashboard.

STEP 02

Swap base URL + key

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://api.aigateway.sh/v1",
    api_key="sk-aig-...",
)

STEP 03

Ship

Request shape, response shape, streaming SSE — identical to OpenAI. Model slugs map 1:1 on shared providers. Braintrust users typically migrate in under 5 minutes.

4 other alternatives

Other Braintrust alternatives worth checking

Honest take: here are four other credible options. None ship the full multi-modal catalog + sub-accounts + evals under one key, but each has a legit wedge.

#2 — LLM router

OpenRouter

Text-LLM aggregator with ~300 model routes.

Closed source · ~300 text-only models.

Read the full OpenRouter comparison →

#3 — Governance gateway

Portkey

LLM gateway-as-a-service focused on governance and observability.

Partially open source · ~40 models, mostly text + some image.

Read the full Portkey comparison →

#4 — Observability proxy

Helicone

LLM observability proxy — strong at logging, not a routing layer.

Open source · Pass-through proxy — whatever providers you wire up.

Read the full Helicone comparison →

#5 — LLM router

Requesty

Cost-aware text-LLM router.

Closed source · ~50 text models.

Read the full Requesty comparison →

FAQ

Common questions about Braintrust alternatives

Is Braintrust open source?

Braintrust has an open-source SDK; the managed platform (evals, logs, prompt library) is closed-source. AIgateway is closed-source.

Does Braintrust charge seat fees?

Yes — Braintrust's commercial tier is seat-based. AIgateway has no seat fees; flat 5% at top-up.

Can Braintrust route between models by cost?

Braintrust's core product is evals. Routing is a downstream action that requires your own code. AIgateway routes at the gateway layer with eval results bound to aliases.

Does Braintrust have a free tier?

Braintrust offers a limited free tier on evals. AIgateway offers 100 req/day on Kimi K2.6 with no card.

Can I keep running Braintrust evals against AIgateway traffic?

Yes — point Braintrust's SDK at https://api.aigateway.sh/v1. You can run both platforms in parallel during migration.

Does AIgateway support video and voice inference?

Yes — video, audio STT/TTS, music, image, embeddings, and text all route through the same OpenAI-compatible endpoint.