Fully open-source LiteLLM alternative with SSO for education?
Hi,
We’re designing a self-hosted LLM gateway setup in an educational/research context, with local vLLM backends and tools like OpenWebUI for human-facing chat.
Right now, the easiest option seems to be LiteLLM, but we’re checking whether there is a fully free and open-source alternative with similar features.
What we need is not only model routing, but the gateway/governance layer:
- OpenAI-compatible API gateway
- Authentication and API key management
- Single Sign-On support, ideally OIDC/SAML
- User/team quotas or budgets
- Cost tracking or token accounting
- Metrics and logs
- Load balancing between multiple vLLM instances serving the same model
- Support for local/private model endpoints
- Compatibility with OpenWebUI
- Reasonable setup and maintenance for a small education/research team
The architecture would probably expose several endpoints through the gateway: local vLLM models, possibly other compatible providers, and maybe a semantic-routing endpoint for automatic model selection when users do not choose a specific model.
Has anyone here deployed something like this in education or research?
We’re also considering whether Portkey or Bifrost could fit this role, so experiences with those tools would be very welcome.
Is there a fully self-hosted, open-source stack that gets close to LiteLLM’s feature set, or is LiteLLM currently the most practical option?
Thanks