Honest comparison
RelayPlane vs Bifrost
Bifrost is a gateway built for throughput. RelayPlane is a ledger and a brake for one machine.
Bifrost, from Maxim AI, is a Go gateway whose README leads with microsecond overhead, 23+ providers, virtual keys, and enterprise features. RelayPlane does not compete on any of that. It runs on localhost, prices every request into a local ledger, enforces a hard daily cap before the request leaves, and has a kill switch. RelayPlane is MIT; Bifrost is Apache 2.0.
Pick RelayPlane if
- You want to see exactly what one machine or one agent spends, per request, without an observability stack
- You want a hard daily cap the proxy enforces (429 budget_exceeded), with block, downgrade, or warn
- You want a one-command kill switch that halts every routed request
- You want npm install and a JSON config file, not a service with a web UI to operate
Pick Bifrost if
- You are fronting production traffic and care about gateway latency and RPS
- You need virtual keys and budgets across teams and customers
- You need OIDC login, Prometheus metrics, tracing, or clustering
- You need 23+ providers including Bedrock and Vertex behind one API
Feature by feature
A check means the feature ships and is documented. Text is a neutral note on how each tool handles it. Where Bifrost is stronger, the table says so.
| Feature | RelayPlane | Bifrost |
|---|---|---|
| What it is Bifrost is built to sit in front of production traffic for a team. RelayPlane sits on a laptop or one server and watches what that machine spends. | Local cost proxy for one machine | High-throughput AI gateway from Maxim AI |
| Install Both are one command to start. Bifrost then configures providers in its web interface; RelayPlane reads ~/.relayplane/config.json. | npm install -g @relayplane/proxy | npx -y @maximhq/bifrost, docker run, or go get |
| Language | TypeScript on Node.js | Go, with an npx wrapper and a Go SDK |
| Throughput and latency Bifrost wins. Those numbers are Bifrost's own benchmark claims, not ours; we have not reproduced them. RelayPlane publishes no throughput figure because it is not the job it does. | Not benchmarked for gateway scale; built for one machine | Their README claims 11 µs overhead per request and 100% success at 5k RPS |
| Providers supported Bifrost wins on breadth, and on cloud-hosted model endpoints in particular. | 6 native (Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, xAI, Ollama) + OpenRouter (300+ models) | 23+ including Bedrock and Vertex |
| Per-request ledger on your machine RelayPlane prices every request and writes it to a local ledger with model, tokens, cost, agent, and session. Bifrost emits logs and metrics for your observability stack to store. | Logging, distributed tracing, and Prometheus metrics | |
| Hard daily cap enforced before the request is forwarded relayplane cap set --day 50 returns 429 budget_exceeded once the next request would pass $50. onBreach can be block, downgrade, or warn. Bifrost's budget model is per-tenant and richer for a team. | Hierarchical budgets per virtual key, team, and customer | |
| Kill switch relayplane kill makes every /v1 request return 503 kill_switch_active until relayplane resume. It survives a proxy restart. | Rate limiting and access control per key | |
| Price table validated in CI against provider pricing pages RelayPlane keeps one price table with a verification date and source per row. A test parses the table and fails the build if any constant disagrees. | Not documented in the README | |
| Governance: virtual keys, teams, customers Bifrost wins. Usage tracking, rate limiting, and fine-grained access control per key are core to it. RelayPlane tracks per agent and per session on one machine and has no tenant keys. | ||
| Enterprise: OIDC login, clustering, Vault Bifrost wins. RelayPlane has none of this and does not plan to compete here. | OIDC user provisioning; clustering listed as an enterprise feature | |
| Routing by task complexity RelayPlane classifies each request and picks a model tier to control cost. Bifrost routes for uptime and throughput. | Load balancing and failover for availability | |
| Dashboard | Local dashboard at localhost:4100 | Web interface for configuration, monitoring, and analytics |
| Where your data lives Both can be fully self-hosted. RelayPlane needs no account and sends nothing by default. | Your machine only | Your deployment; Maxim observability is an optional plugin |
| Hosted or enterprise offering RelayPlane's hosted layer (run history, team dashboards, alerts) is a waitlist, not a product you can buy today. | Hosted team layer in early access | Enterprise features and the Maxim AI platform |
| License | MIT | Apache 2.0 |
What RelayPlane does that a gateway does not
Local-first cost visibility and control. Each line below is a real command and the documented result.
- 01
A per-request ledger you can read without an observability stack
Every request through localhost:4100 is priced and written locally with model, tokens, cost, agent fingerprint, and session. No Prometheus, no tracing backend, no service to run.
relayplane kills --last 7devery blocked request, with agent, session, and cost saved - 02
A hard cap the proxy enforces, not a dashboard you check later
Set a daily dollar limit. The request that would cross it is refused before it reaches the provider. Choose block, downgrade to a cheaper model, or warn.
relayplane cap set --day 50429 budget_exceeded on the request that would pass $50 - 03
A kill switch that stops everything in one command
When an agent goes wrong at 2 a.m., you want one verb. Kill halts every routed request until you resume. Passthrough mode is different: traffic still flows.
relayplane kill503 kill_switch_active until relayplane resume - 04
A price table the build refuses to let drift
Each row carries a source URL and a verification date. A test parses the table and fails CI if a constant disagrees with it. Models that cannot be verified are excluded rather than guessed.
pnpm --filter @relayplane/proxy test model-pricingfails if any price row and constant disagree
Where Bifrost is the better tool
Gateway performance
Bifrost's README leads with microsecond overhead and thousands of requests per second. Those are their numbers, but they are the whole point of the project. RelayPlane does not publish a throughput figure.
Governance for teams
Virtual keys, hierarchical budgets across teams and customers, rate limits, and OIDC provisioning. RelayPlane has none of the tenant model.
Production ops
Prometheus metrics, distributed tracing, clustering for multi-node deployment, and a web UI for configuration. RelayPlane is one process on one machine.
Questions people search
- Bifrost vs LiteLLM: which gateway should I pick?
- Both are self-hostable gateways. Bifrost is Go, Apache 2.0, claims 23+ providers, and its README leads with throughput numbers and enterprise features like OIDC and clustering. LiteLLM is Python, MIT, claims 100+ providers, and has the larger community and a mature enterprise offering. Pick Bifrost for raw gateway performance and Go deployment, LiteLLM for breadth and ecosystem. RelayPlane compares against LiteLLM on its own page.
- Is Bifrost an LLM proxy?
- Yes, in the gateway sense: it sits between your applications and 23+ providers, unifies the API, load balances, and applies governance. RelayPlane is also a proxy but a narrower one: it runs on one machine, prices every request into a local ledger, and enforces a daily cap and a kill switch there.
- Is RelayPlane a Bifrost alternative?
- Not for production gateway traffic. If you need thousands of requests per second, virtual keys across teams, OIDC, or clustering, Bifrost was built for that and RelayPlane was not. RelayPlane is the alternative when the question is "what did this machine or this agent spend, and how do I stop it" and you do not want to run a gateway to answer it.
- Can RelayPlane run in front of Bifrost?
- Yes. Point your client at RelayPlane on localhost and set RelayPlane's provider base URL to your Bifrost gateway. RelayPlane keeps the local ledger, daily cap, and kill switch for that machine, and Bifrost keeps routing and governing traffic behind it. Test it on your own workload; we have not benchmarked the pair.
- Which costs less to run?
- Both are free and open source to self-host: RelayPlane under MIT, Bifrost under Apache 2.0. The real cost is operating time. RelayPlane is one npm process with a JSON config file. Bifrost is a service you deploy, configure through its web UI, and typically pair with Prometheus or an observability platform. Neither charges for the software.
Related comparisons
Try the free proxy. Nothing leaves your machine.
MIT licensed. No account. Runs on localhost:4100.
npm install -g @relayplane/proxy