Only 5 of 14 AI Gateways Expose Model Lists Without an Account, Audit Finds
A developer tested 14 AI gateway services on September 30, 2026, by querying their documented OpenAI-compatible endpoints without any credentials or API keys. Only five gateways — OpenRouter, Requesty, Vercel AI Gateway, LLM7.io, and FreeModel — returned publicly accessible model catalogues, while eight required authentication to view their listings. Two gateways, Mistral and Gemini's OpenAI-compatible endpoint, were entirely unreachable from the test network. Notably, every reachable gateway's chat route returned an authentication error rather than a 404, confirming that all documented base URLs were technically valid. The author argues that whether a gateway publishes a public model list has practical consequences for migration costs and vendor lock-in, particularly because model identifier formats vary significantly across providers.
This is an AI-generated summary. ShortSingh links to the original source for the complete article.


Discussion (0)
Log in to join the discussion and vote.
Log in