4 categories · RankedBifrost
Bifrost is an LLM, MCP, and agent gateway that sits between applications and AI model providers · getmaxim.ai ↗
Strongest at enterprise, contested with LiteLLM. Ranked 12 of 70 for small business buyers.
The standing depends on who is buying. Every model is asked the same questions for each company size.
Portkey is first at 36%.
LiteLLM is first at 36%. 1 of 14 models made it the first choice when asked directly.
Ranked first, contested: LiteLLM has 18%.
Why models recommend it
“Bifrost leads on published performance (11 microseconds of overhead at 5,000 RPS) and is the only one here with governance and an MCP gateway in the same open-source binary.”Muse Glimmer 30B · Comparative question · first choice
“Bifrost leads for production at a benchmarked 11 microseconds of overhead, with a Go core, native MCP gateway, semantic caching, and virtual-key governance”Claude Haiku 4.5 · Comparative question · first choice
“Bifrost leads in performance with 11 microseconds of overhead at 5,000 RPS and offers advanced governance features.”Llama 4 Maverick · Comparative question · first choice
“Self‑host LiteLLM (or Bifrost) → pay only provider rates, full control, and strong cost governance.”GLM 4.7 FlashX · Budget-constrained question · first choice
What gives them pause
“it may be overkill (and more enterprise-focused) for simpler mid-market needs”Grok 4.20 · Direct question · warning
Also on the shortlist
The products named in the same answers as Bifrost, over the 121 answers that named it, and how often each was the first choice instead.
| Product | Named together | Picked instead | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 90 | 28 | Compare → | |
| 74 | 17 | Compare → | |
| 65 | 3 | View → | |
| 63 | 2 | Compare → | |
| 61 | 4 | Compare → | |
| 23 | 1 | Compare → | |
| 20 | 1 | View → | |
| 20 | 0 | View → | |
| 16 | 1 | View → | |
| 13 | 2 | Compare → |
What the models named instead of Bifrost →
A side-by-side page exists where both products are among a category's top eight.
How this is measured
Fourteen AI models from 12 labs are asked the same buying questions six ways, for three company sizes. Standings refresh every edition.
Gane sells AI visibility software. No company can pay to change a result.
Read the method →Sources returned with these answers
Fourteen of the fourteen models returned a source list in this edition: five return the pages they cited and nine the search results they consulted. These counts come from 120 of the 121 answers that named Bifrost and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
245 of the 371 domain citations in answers naming Bifrost came from a third party's page. Seventeen were to the publisher's own pages (the Gane Index), which the models cite like any other source; they are not counted as a third party.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
By model
| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Warning | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 4 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Grok 4.20 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| Mistral Small | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 4 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 1 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 5 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Kimi K2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 7 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
What it publishes
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Comparison | 4,130 | 0 | 2026-01-31 | ||
| Template or tool | 3,561 | undated | |||
| Blog | 1,116 | 23 | 2026-09-26 | LLM gateways, Observability | |
| Report or ebook | 55 | undated | |||
| Glossary or explainer | 33 | 15 | 2026-09-21 | LLM gateways | |
| Conference or event | 1 | 0 | 2026-04-18 |
Most recent
- 2026-09-26Best llm gateways in 2026 blog
- 2026-09-25Best ai gateway to manage codex cli token spend blog
- 2026-09-25Ai agent governance for mcp tool calls best platforms 2026 blog
- 2026-09-25Best enterprise mcp gateways to secure mcp traffic in 2026 blog
- 2026-09-25Best codex security tools for enterprise in 2026 blog
- 2026-09-25Ai cost management 5 tools to track llm spend in 2026 blog
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page getmaxim.ai exposes, subdomains included. Kind is read from the address and title. The last 90 days, the latest date and the twelve months count pages by when they were published, from the site's feeds, a date in the address, or the page's own publication date, read from up to a hundred of its most recently changed pages; a page that says only when it last changed is counted in its kind but not in when, so the recent counts are a floor, and a kind none of whose pages gives a publication date reads undated. An event counts as online when its address or title says so (webinar, on demand, virtual or online summit); a conference, summit, trade show, expo or roadshow that does not say so is counted as a conference or event, which on a vendor's site is mostly in person. Read September 29, 2026.