LLM proxy vs AI gateway: what’s the difference and which one do you need?

LLM proxies are lightweight middleware layers for routing requests between applications and LLM providers, suitable for prototyping and early-stage projects. AI gateways are production-grade infrastructure that provide comprehensive governance, security, observability, and cost control for enterprise LLM usage. While proxies offer basic routing and caching, gateways add access controls, guardrails, audit logs, rate limiting, and multi-provider management. Teams should choose proxies for simple experimentation and gateways when scaling LLM usage across multiple teams, products, or production environments.