An Enterprise AI Platform, Not Just an LLM Proxy
WSO2 brings developer portal, API monetization, lifecycle management, multi-protocol APIs, and multi-gateway federation alongside AI Gateway. LiteLLM is an OSS LLM proxy, and it stops at the model layer.
| Pillar |
|
LiteLLM |
|---|---|---|
| Head-to-head snapshot, by pillar | ||
| Agentic Ready | MCP Hub with llms.txt, AI-readiness scoring in the IDE, and auto-generated MCP servers from existing APIs. | Full MCP Gateway and a shipped A2A Agent Gateway at the protocol level, but no portal, no design-time governance, and no agent-readable discovery surface. |
| Universal Governance | One control plane governs API, AI, and MCP traffic, including WSO2, AWS, Azure, Kong, and Envoy gateways. | Governs LLM, MCP, and agent traffic through its own proxy only; no API management and no third-party gateway federation. |
| Freedom and Flexibility | 100% Apache 2.0 core, deployable as SaaS, hybrid, self-hosted, or air-gapped, with modular components you can adopt independently. | MIT-licensed core, but SSO beyond 5 users, SCIM, JWT auth, audit logs, secret detection, and air-gapped operation sit behind a commercial license. |
| Monetization | Native, Moesif-powered analytics, FinOps, and monetization, battle-tested at Siemens, You.com, and Oxford University Press. | Spend tracking and budgets exist, but there is no native, consumer-facing API monetization; that needs a third-party platform such as Lago. |
| Capability | Benefit |
|
LiteLLM |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agentic ready | |||
| Agent-ready MCP Hub | Agents find and call your APIs without a human in the loop | MCP Hub on a fully customizable portal, llms.txt entry point, and spec endpoints agents can read without auth. Auto-generates MCP servers from existing API specs in a few clicks. | No portal or hub. MCP servers are config entries behind one endpoint, with no llms.txt and no agent-readable discovery surface. |
| AI-readiness governance | Catch APIs that agents cannot use before they ship, inside the IDE | AI readiness scoring in the VS Code API Designer, Spectral rulesets, and AI compliance checks against plain-language rules. | No design-time story. No spec linting, readiness scoring, or compliance checks; governance starts at runtime keys. |
| MCP & A2A control | Secure, rate-limit, and govern MCP servers and agent-to-agent traffic, and reuse the APIs you already have | MCP proxy with authentication, tool-level authorization, rate limits, and rewrite policies, plus auto-generated MCP servers from existing API specs. A2A is on the AI Gateway roadmap for Q3 2026. | Full MCP Gateway implementing the 2025-11-25 protocol, with MCP OAuth, on-behalf-of auth, AWS SigV4, and zero-trust JWT signing; converts OpenAPI/Swagger specs into MCP servers. A2A Agent Gateway has already shipped in a stable release. |
| Universal governance | |||
| Unified API + AI + MCP governance | One place to govern APIs, LLMs, and MCP traffic | One control plane across API, AI, and MCP traffic, including the gateways WSO2 federates (WSO2, AWS, Azure, Kong, Envoy). | Governs LLM, MCP, and agent traffic through its own proxy only, with no API management and no federation of other gateways or the wider estate. |
| AI guardrails depth | Protect data and prove compliance | 40+ policies in Policy Hub: semantic prompt guard, PII masking, NeMo Guard, Granite Guardian, Bedrock, and Azure Content Safety, plus the ability to write custom guardrails in Go. Included with AI Gateway. | Around 42 largely third-party guardrail integrations (Presidio, Bedrock Guardrails, Lakera, Model Armor, and others); depth comes from wiring external vendors, and secret detection is an Enterprise feature. |
| Identity and MCP access control | Enforce who can call which tools, with agent and user identity from the same vendor | WSO2 Identity Server natively secures human APIs and AI traffic (OIDC, SAML, CIBA, SCIM, CIAM) with no per-seat user cap. mcp-authz is GA for tool-level authorization and per-tool rate limits. | No identity product. OSS auth is virtual keys; JWT auth, SSO beyond 5 users, and SCIM are Enterprise features. Access is scoped by virtual key and team on a static endpoint, with no per-tool authorization or rewrite policies. |
| Event-native governance | Govern Kafka and event-stream traffic alongside APIs and AI | Roadmap: Event Gateway GA targeted for Q4 2026. | Not in scope. No event or Kafka governance. |
| Freedom and flexibility | |||
| Modular, unbundled architecture | Accelerate time to value and reduce TCO by deploying only what you need | Gateway, AI Workspace, API control plane, MCP Hub, and monetization can be purchased and deployed independently, then layered in later. | One proxy process. Nothing to unbundle: no portal, monetization, or identity modules exist to layer in later. |
| Deployment flexibility | Run wherever the regulator requires, including air-gapped environments | Self-hosted, hybrid, and SaaS deployment models, including air-gapped, from a single Apache 2.0 codebase. | Self-hosting the proxy is easy (Docker/Kubernetes, one Uvicorn worker per pod), but hardened, air-gapped enterprise deployment sits behind a paid tier. |
| 100% open-source foundation | Meets open-source procurement and sovereignty mandates | Apache 2.0 across the platform with full function, no open core. Monetization is the one SaaS-only exception. | Open-core. The MIT-licensed gateway is capable, but SSO beyond 5 users, SCIM, JWT auth, audit logs, secret detection, and air-gapped operation all sit in the commercially licensed enterprise/ directory. |
| Provider & routing choice | Route to any model, on any infrastructure, in the language your team already uses | Native routing (Round Robin, Weighted, Failover, Intelligent, Semantic) across all major LLM providers and any custom provider you add. Envoy data plane with policies in Go or Python. | Advertises 140+ providers and roughly 1,900 to 2,600 models, with shuffle, least-busy, latency-, cost-, and usage-based routing strategies. It still runs as a Python (FastAPI) proxy on the hot path, one Uvicorn worker per pod. |
| Monetization | |||
| Business-level AI analytics | See which customers adopt, which stick, and which will pay more | Moesif-powered adoption funnels, retention, behavioral cohorts, AI Explain, and automated customer guidance. | Spend and usage dashboards by key, team, tag, and model. That's ops telemetry, not product analytics. |
| AI FinOps and chargeback | Understand and chargeback AI cost automatically | Token and USD budgets per user, team, and app; cost dashboards with fully automated chargeback and export to external systems. | Built-in spend tracking, cost attribution, and budgets per key, user, and team; automated chargeback requires integration with a third-party platform such as Lago. |
| Enterprise-grade AI monetization | Turn AI APIs into revenue centers | Battle-tested with Siemens, You.com, and Oxford University Press. Stripe, Zuora, Chargebee, and AWS Marketplace connectors; prepaid credits and business-level quotas. | No native API monetization. Virtual keys, budgets, and spend reports exist, but consumer-facing billing for API products needs a third-party platform such as Lago. |
| Cross-gateway monetization | Monetize the estate you already run, not just one vendor's gateway | Moesif gateway plugins meter Kong and AWS traffic today, billed from one control plane. | Multi-region control plane is Enterprise-only and federates instances of itself with each other, not third-party gateways or the wider estate. |
Why teams choose WSO2 AI Gateway
over LiteLLM
Deployment options
Resources
WSO2 AI Gateway
Enterprise AI gateway with native guardrails, MCP Hub, and multi-model routing.
API Portal & MCP Hub
Productized MCP Hub for AI-agent tool discovery and consumption.
WSO2 API Platform
The full API platform LiteLLM customers usually need alongside an LLM proxy.
Frequently asked questions
Just a proxy. LiteLLM ships as a Python SDK and proxy server that stops at the model layer, with no developer portal, API monetization, or lifecycle management. WSO2 AI Gateway is one component of a full API platform that layers on multi-protocol API management, a developer portal, and native monetization.
Yes. LiteLLM advertises 2,600+ models across 140+ providers, versus WSO2's 7 native providers plus configurable custom ones. WSO2 natively covers the major enterprise providers such as OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, AWS Bedrock, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Mistral, and Azure AI Foundry, with custom providers for anything else.
Not entirely. LiteLLM's core is MIT licensed, but features like SSO beyond 5 users and per-key/per-team guardrail scoping ship behind a separate Commercial License gated by a LITELLM_LICENSE key. WSO2 API Platform's core runtime is Apache 2.0.
No. LiteLLM's "multi-region control plane" is Enterprise-only and only federates LiteLLM instances with each other, not third-party gateways. WSO2 governs APIs running on WSO2, AWS, Azure, Kong, and Envoy gateways from a single control plane.
Not quite. LiteLLM's MCP Gateway is protocol-focused, covering MCP OAuth, OBO Auth, AWS SigV4, Zero-Trust JWT signing, and semantic tool filtering, while its AI Hub (an Enterprise feature) is a narrower, branded catalog of models, agents, and MCP servers. WSO2 adds a developer-facing MCP Hub with subscription flows, credential issuance, and an MCP Playground as a first-class part of API Platform.
Yes. LiteLLM disclosed a March 2026 PyPI supply-chain malware incident affecting 2,100+ downstream organizations and is currently recertifying SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 with a new auditor as a result. WSO2 ships documented enterprise SLAs and 24/7 global support as part of the standard subscription.
LiteLLM is a trademark of Berri AI Incorporated. All product, company names, and marks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners and are mentioned for identification purposes only. Last updated August 2026. * Monetization is the one SaaS-only exception to WSO2's Apache 2.0 licensing; every other core component ships fully open source.