What is an AI gateway?

One layer between the people, apps and agents that use AI, and the models and tools they call.

Scroll sideways to see the whole diagram.

Who calls: Chat apps, internal tools and agents send every request to the gateway, not to a provider.
The gateway: It checks who may call what, enforces budgets and guardrails, routes each request and logs it.
What it calls: Models from any provider, and the tools agents reach through MCP servers.

Thirty AI gateways, scored on the same eight criteria. We sell none of them.