Is Conifer an alternative to Bifrost?

Yes, if you would rather use a hosted gateway than run one. Both give one OpenAI-compatible API for models from many providers, with fallbacks, budgets and cost tracking. Bifrost is open source and runs on your own infrastructure with your provider keys. Conifer is hosted and sells model usage from a prepaid balance.

Who makes Bifrost, and is it free?

Bifrost is built by Maxim AI. The gateway is open source under the Apache 2.0 licence and free to run on your own servers. Bifrost Enterprise, which adds clustering, guardrails, single sign-on and audit logs, is priced on request.

Can I use Bifrost and Conifer together?

Yes. Bifrost can add any OpenAI-compatible endpoint as a custom provider, so you can add Conifer as a provider in a Bifrost gateway and keep your virtual keys, budgets and logs there.

Do I need to run anything to use Conifer?

No. Conifer is a hosted service. Create a key, set the base URL in your client, and send requests.

Does Conifer store my prompts?

The gateway does not store the prompt of a standard request. It holds a response for ten minutes so that a retried request is not charged twice, and keeps request details such as the model, token counts and cost for billing.

Comparison

Conifer and Bifrost compared

Both give one OpenAI-compatible API for AI models from many providers. Bifrost is an open-source gateway you run yourself, and Conifer is a hosted one. This page sets out how each works, using each company’s own published documentation.

Summary

Bifrost is an open-source AI gateway from Maxim AI, released under the Apache 2.0 licence. You run it on your own infrastructure, in front of provider accounts you hold, and Bifrost Enterprise adds clustering, guardrails, single sign-on and audit logs. Conifer is a hosted gateway. There is nothing to deploy, model usage is paid from a prepaid balance, and every response states the model that served it and the exact amount charged.

Bifrost publishes its own speed figures. Its GitHub README and docs report 11 microseconds of added overhead per request at a sustained 5,000 requests per second on an AWS t3.xlarge instance, and its home page lists 20 microseconds of added latency. This page does not compare speed. Bifrost details were read from getmaxim.ai, docs.getbifrost.ai and its GitHub repository on 7 November 2026. Features and licence terms change; check Bifrost’s own pages before you decide.

Side by side

Topic	Conifer	Bifrost
Where it runs	A hosted service at one Conifer address; there is nothing to deploy	A gateway you run yourself with Docker, on Kubernetes or as a Go binary, keeping its configuration and logs in SQLite or PostgreSQL. Enterprise lists VPC, on-premises and air-gapped deployment
Who operates it	Conifer runs the service, chooses the provider for each request and retries another provider on failure	Your team. Cluster mode, which keeps several instances in step for high availability, is an Enterprise feature
Licence	The Conifer SDK for TypeScript and Python is open source; the gateway is a hosted service	Open source under Apache 2.0. Bifrost Enterprise builds on the open-source gateway and needs a licence from Maxim AI
Model access	More than 230 models paid from one prepaid balance, with no provider accounts needed; your own Azure OpenAI resource can sit behind the same key	You add the providers and keys you hold, including servers you run such as vLLM and Ollama, and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint as a custom provider
Interfaces	OpenAI Chat Completions, OpenAI Responses and Anthropic Messages, plus embeddings, on one key	An OpenAI-compatible API, plus drop-in routes for the OpenAI, Anthropic and Google GenAI SDKs
What you pay	Every model is billed at its maker’s published list price per token, with no subscription, from a prepaid balance. Requests served by your own Azure OpenAI resource carry no Conifer fee	The open-source gateway is free and runs on servers you provide, and providers bill you on your own accounts. Enterprise is priced on request, with a 14-day free trial
A named model	Served as named, or refused. When a provider fails, rate-limits or times out, the gateway serves the same model from another provider at the same price, for models with more than one provider. You can also list up to three fallback models	Retries move a failed request to another of your keys for the same provider, and fallbacks send it to the next provider in a chain you set. Enterprise adds adaptive load balancing based on live provider health
Cost on each request	Every response carries the amount charged, itemised by token type, and a streamed response ends with the same receipt	Each request’s cost is computed from a built-in price list, synced every 24 hours, or from rates you set, and recorded with its log
Spending limits	A cost ceiling per request, a spend cap per key and a monthly limit on the account. A request that could exceed a ceiling is refused before any provider is called	Budgets and rate limits on virtual keys, teams and customers, set in a hierarchy
Data handling	Requests pass through Conifer and the provider that serves them. The prompt of a standard request is not stored, a response is held for ten minutes so a retry is not charged twice, and request details such as model, tokens and cost are kept for billing	Requests, provider keys and logs stay on infrastructure you run. Each log keeps details such as model, tokens and cost, and the text of prompts and responses can be left out for the whole gateway, a virtual key or a project
Beyond the gateway	The docs cover the gateway, the router and the SDKs	An MCP gateway, semantic caching, a prompt repository and custom plugins. Enterprise adds guardrails, and Bifrost Edge routes AI traffic from employees’ laptops through the gateway
Enterprise terms	Team accounts with owner, admin and member roles, per-key model scope and spend caps, set up on request	Enterprise lists SSO through SAML and OIDC, role-based access control, audit logs, secret managers, log exports and support backed by an SLA

Which one fits

Bifrost may suit you if: Requests and provider keys must stay inside your own infrastructure; you already hold provider contracts or run models on your own servers and want one gateway in front of them; your team wants to run, extend and change the gateway itself under an open-source licence; or you want AI tools on employees’ laptops to go through the same gateway.
Conifer may suit you if: You would rather not run a gateway, its database and its upgrades; you want many models on one prepaid balance without an account with each provider; you need each response to state the model that served and the exact amount charged; or you want a cost ceiling enforced before any provider is called.
Using both: Bifrost can add any OpenAI-compatible endpoint as a custom provider, so a Bifrost gateway can list Conifer as one of its providers. Your virtual keys, budgets and logs stay in Bifrost, and Conifer serves the models.

Moving from Bifrost to Conifer

Address and key: Point your OpenAI or Anthropic client at Conifer in place of your gateway, and use a Conifer key.
OPENAI_BASE_URL=https://api.conifer.build/v1 OPENAI_API_KEY=$CONIFER_API_KEY
Model names: Use the model names in the Conifer catalog. Names with the lab in front, such as anthropic/claude-opus-5, are also accepted.
Fallbacks: Conifer tries another provider for the same model on its own. To try other models, list up to three fallbacks in a request header.
Keys and budgets: Give each person or service its own key with a spend cap. Team accounts are set up by Conifer, and an admin can limit a key to a list of models.
Coding tools: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, VS Code, Aider, Zed, opencode and Open WebUI each have a setup page under Tools.
Check first: Your own endpoint can be an Azure OpenAI resource. AWS Bedrock and Google Vertex are not served as your own endpoints today, and the moderations endpoint is not served.

Replace your provider key has the full steps, Any client covers other OpenAI-compatible software, and Teams covers team keys.

Conifer Gateway: One API key and endpoint for every model in the catalog, with the model and cost stated on every response.
What is an LLM gateway?: How a gateway sits between your software and the companies that serve models, and what to check when you choose one.
Conifer vs LiteLLM: The two gateways side by side, from each company's own documentation.
Conifer vs Portkey: The two gateways side by side, from each company's own documentation.
Conifer vs Helicone: The two gateways side by side, from each company's own documentation.
All comparisons: Conifer compared with eleven other LLM gateways and routers, from their own documentation.

Questions

Is Conifer an alternative to Bifrost?: Yes, if you would rather use a hosted gateway than run one. Both give one OpenAI-compatible API for models from many providers, with fallbacks, budgets and cost tracking. Bifrost is open source and runs on your own infrastructure with your provider keys. Conifer is hosted and sells model usage from a prepaid balance.
Who makes Bifrost, and is it free?: Bifrost is built by Maxim AI. The gateway is open source under the Apache 2.0 licence and free to run on your own servers. Bifrost Enterprise, which adds clustering, guardrails, single sign-on and audit logs, is priced on request.
Can I use Bifrost and Conifer together?: Yes. Bifrost can add any OpenAI-compatible endpoint as a custom provider, so you can add Conifer as a provider in a Bifrost gateway and keep your virtual keys, budgets and logs there.
Do I need to run anything to use Conifer?: No. Conifer is a hosted service. Create a key, set the base URL in your client, and send requests.
Does Conifer store my prompts?: The gateway does not store the prompt of a standard request. It holds a response for ten minutes so that a retried request is not charged twice, and keeps request details such as the model, token counts and cost for billing.