Is Conifer an alternative to TrueFoundry AI Gateway?

For the gateway, yes, if a hosted service suits you. Both put one API in front of models from many providers, with fallbacks, budgets and cost tracking. TrueFoundry can also run inside your own infrastructure, connects to provider accounts you hold, and adds guardrails, an MCP gateway and model deployment. Conifer is hosted and also sells model usage from a prepaid balance.

Can TrueFoundry AI Gateway be self-hosted?

Yes, on its Enterprise plan. The gateway can run on your own infrastructure with TrueFoundry’s control plane, or with both on your side, including VPC, on-premises and air-gapped setups. TrueFoundry also offers a managed gateway. Conifer is a hosted service, with nothing to deploy.

How do TrueFoundry and Conifer charge?

TrueFoundry charges for the gateway by user and by request, from free on Developer to $25 per user a month on Pro, and model providers bill you separately on your own accounts. Conifer has no subscription: every model is billed at its maker’s published list price per token, from a prepaid balance.

Do I need provider accounts to use Conifer?

No. One Conifer key covers every model in the catalog, paid from a prepaid balance. You can also put your own Azure OpenAI resource behind the same key, and Conifer adds no fee on that usage.

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 TrueFoundry AI Gateway compared

Both put one gateway in front of AI models from many providers. TrueFoundry runs as a managed service or inside your own infrastructure, and Conifer is a hosted service. This page sets out how each works, using each company’s own published documentation.

Summary

TrueFoundry AI Gateway is an enterprise gateway with governance, guardrails, an MCP gateway and observability, part of a wider TrueFoundry platform that also deploys, trains and fine-tunes models. It runs as a managed service or, on the Enterprise plan, inside your own cloud or data centre, and it connects to provider accounts you hold. Conifer is a hosted gateway that also sells model usage from a prepaid balance, serves a named model only as named, and reports the exact cost of every request.

TrueFoundry details were read from truefoundry.com and its documentation on 7 November 2026. Plans and prices change; check TrueFoundry’s own pricing and documentation before you decide.

Side by side

Topic	Conifer	TrueFoundry
Where it runs	A hosted service at one Conifer address; there is nothing to deploy	TrueFoundry’s managed cloud, optionally with request logs kept in your own storage bucket. On Enterprise, the gateway, or the gateway and its control plane, run on your own infrastructure, including VPC, on-premises and air-gapped setups
Who operates it	Conifer runs the service, chooses the provider for each request and retries another provider on failure	TrueFoundry, on the managed service. When you host the gateway, keeping it and its log ingestion service available is up to your team, and the sign-in and licensing server stays with TrueFoundry
Cost of hosting	None; there is nothing to host	None on the managed service. TrueFoundry’s docs estimate about $600 a month to host the gateway yourself, and about $800 to $1,000 a month with the control plane as well
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 provider accounts you hold, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex and Azure, with their credentials. Model servers you run, such as vLLM, SGLang, Ollama and TGI, can be added by address
Interfaces	OpenAI Chat Completions, OpenAI Responses and Anthropic Messages, plus embeddings, on one key	OpenAI Chat Completions, OpenAI Responses and Anthropic Messages, plus embeddings, rerank, moderation, image and audio endpoints
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	Developer is free for up to 3 users, with 10,000 requests and tool calls per user a month. Pro is $25 per user a month with 20,000 per user, then $20 for each further 100,000. Enterprise is custom. Model providers bill you separately, and TrueFoundry says it never marks up tokens
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	A virtual model puts one name in front of several target models and routes by weight, priority or measured latency, with retries and fallbacks when a target fails
Automatic model choice	The router, in beta, picks one model from a pool you approve. Routing adds no fee: a request sent to `beta-auto` costs only the model that answers it	Auto Routing sorts each request into simple, medium or complex and sends it to the model you set for that level. The sorting is done by a built-in heuristic, a chat model or a decision model
Cost on each request	Every response carries the amount charged, itemised by token type, and a streamed response ends with the same receipt	The gateway calculates the cost of every request from the price set for the model, either the published rates in TrueFoundry’s catalog or rates you enter, and shows it in its metrics
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	Budget rules for a tenant or a team, matched on users, models, provider accounts or metadata, either block requests over the limit or only warn. Rate limits can be set per user, team, model or application. Developer allows one budget rule and Pro up to ten
Request logs	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. Customer content is not used to train models	Full request and response logs are stored, and logging can be switched off for a request. Logs are kept 7 days on Developer, 30 days on Pro and for a custom period on Enterprise, and can be kept in your own storage bucket
Beyond the gateway	The docs cover the gateway, the router and the SDKs	Guardrails, an MCP gateway, an agent gateway, prompt management, and a platform to deploy, train and fine-tune models
Enterprise terms	Team accounts with owner, admin and member roles, per-key model scope and spend caps, set up on request	SSO, custom roles and audit logs from Pro. Enterprise adds audit exports, data residency, VPC, on-premises and air-gapped deployment, and priority support with an SLA. TrueFoundry’s docs state its infrastructure is SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR and HIPAA compliant

Which one fits

TrueFoundry may suit you if: The gateway must run inside your own cloud or data centre, including air-gapped; you already hold provider contracts or run your own model servers and want one gateway in front of them; you want guardrails, an MCP gateway and model deployment on the same platform; or your security review asks for SSO, audit logs and a stated compliance list.
Conifer may suit you if: You would rather not run a gateway or its control plane; 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: TrueFoundry can add a model server it does not run by its address and key, and its docs recommend servers with OpenAI-compatible APIs. Conifer can be added that way, so your budgets, guardrails and logs stay in TrueFoundry and Conifer serves the models.

Moving from TrueFoundry 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.
Providers and fallbacks: Conifer picks the provider for each request and tries another provider for the same model if one fails, so you do not set up provider lists. 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.
Your own Azure resource: Paste the Azure OpenAI resource address and key once in the console. Callers keep using their Conifer key, and usage is billed to your Azure agreement.
Check first: 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, Bring your own endpoint covers Azure, and Routing covers fallbacks and failover.

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 Portkey: The two gateways side by side, from each company's own documentation.
Conifer vs LiteLLM: The two gateways side by side, from each company's own documentation.
Conifer vs OpenRouter: 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 TrueFoundry AI Gateway?: For the gateway, yes, if a hosted service suits you. Both put one API in front of models from many providers, with fallbacks, budgets and cost tracking. TrueFoundry can also run inside your own infrastructure, connects to provider accounts you hold, and adds guardrails, an MCP gateway and model deployment. Conifer is hosted and also sells model usage from a prepaid balance.
Can TrueFoundry AI Gateway be self-hosted?: Yes, on its Enterprise plan. The gateway can run on your own infrastructure with TrueFoundry’s control plane, or with both on your side, including VPC, on-premises and air-gapped setups. TrueFoundry also offers a managed gateway. Conifer is a hosted service, with nothing to deploy.
How do TrueFoundry and Conifer charge?: TrueFoundry charges for the gateway by user and by request, from free on Developer to $25 per user a month on Pro, and model providers bill you separately on your own accounts. Conifer has no subscription: every model is billed at its maker’s published list price per token, from a prepaid balance.
Do I need provider accounts to use Conifer?: No. One Conifer key covers every model in the catalog, paid from a prepaid balance. You can also put your own Azure OpenAI resource behind the same key, and Conifer adds no fee on that usage.
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.