Comparing AI gateways on price sounds simple until you read the fine print. The number on the pricing page is rarely the number on your invoice, because gateway fees hide in two separate places: a platform fee on the credits you buy, and a markup on the tokens you spend. Miss either one and your "cheap" gateway quietly costs more than the provider you were trying to save money on.
This guide breaks down what the major AI gateways actually charge in 2026, using each vendor's published pricing. LLM Gateway is one of them, so we're biased — but the table below is the real picture, including where others are cheaper for a given workload.
Two fees, not one
Every gateway makes money in one (or both) of two ways:
Token markup — a percentage added on top of the provider's per-token rate. A 10% markup on a $5/1M-token model means you pay $5.50. This is the expensive one, because it scales with every token forever.
