LLM Router vs LiteLLM Proxy vs Hosted Gateways: A Practical Guide
Three ways to route across models, compared on control, fallback behaviour, cost control, observability and portability — including when you need none of them.
Comparisons
Side-by-side comparisons, with the trade-off stated
Two tools, same job. Here is where each one is faster, cheaper, or more annoying.
A comparison is only worth reading if both sides were actually run. In every post below I pointed both tools at the same corpus, ran the same evaluation set, and wrote down what happened — including the parts where my preference changed halfway through.
Each table has the same columns: cost, latency, setup effort, failure modes, and who should skip it. If a tool wins on paper but lost in practice, that is what the verdict says.
Start here
Pinecone vs Qdrant vs Weaviate: Vector Database Comparison
Three vector databases compared on deployment, filtering, latency, ops burden, cost model and scaling — plus which one fits your team.
Comparisons
n8n vs Make vs Zapier: Workflow Automation for AI Workloads
Three automation platforms compared on self-hosting, code escape hatches, task billing, retries and long-flow reliability — with a pick for each team size.
LangChain vs LlamaIndex: Which RAG Framework Fits Your Stack
LangChain optimises for agent chains and tool use; LlamaIndex optimises for ingestion and retrieval. Where each one actually saves you engineering time.
Comparisons questions
How long do you run each tool before writing?
At least a month for anything with a data path — indexing, retrieval, evaluation. For simpler tools a week is enough, and the post says which it was.
Do you accept payment for a favourable comparison?
No. Some links are affiliate links, which means a commission if you buy through them. That is disclosed on the page, and it does not decide the verdict.
Why are some popular tools missing?
Because I have not run them. A comparison written from documentation is a summary, not a test, and those are easy to find elsewhere.