Multi-Provider LLM Failover: Why Your AI App Needs a Circuit Breaker

If you've built anything on LLM APIs, you've seen it: the provider is down, or you hit the daily limit, and your app breaks.

The fragility of single-provider setups

Relying on one LLM provider is a single point of failure. Free tiers are especially volatile — they get hammered, rate-limited, and occasionally go down.

Failover done right

FreeGate chains 13+ free providers with a circuit breaker. When one provider fails or exhausts its quota, the request automatically routes to the next healthy one.

What circuit breaking means

• A failing provider is temporarily marked down — no wasted timeouts
• Recovery is automatic
• Your app never shows "API unavailable"

The dashboard

See provider status, request history, and remaining limits in one view.

FAQ

How do I add a provider? Add it to providers.json or config.json with endpoint, model, and env var for the key.

Is it compatible with my code? It exposes a standard OpenAI-compatible API, so any client works.