When a shared AI budget gets audited, the question isn't "can you enforce a limit?" — it's "who approved the exception, when did it expire, and where's the proof?" LiteLLM is an open-source gateway with real enforcement in the core: 100+ providers, self-hosted, free, with Redis-backed budget hard-stops per key/user/team and a guardrail engine (PII, prompt-injection, moderation). The line isn't "we enforce, they don't." What it doesn't ship is the governance layer around that enforcement: a time-bounded budget-increase approval workflow with retained history, org-level role-scoped policy, signed tamper-evident receipts, and a zero-ops hosted experience. Wardin ships that layer as one signed event per gateway-routed request — the enforcement, the metering, and the audit trail wired to the same receipt, with budget exceptions that get approved for a window and auto-revert — at the cost of narrower provider coverage today.
For the team that needs maximum provider reach or must self-host, LiteLLM is ahead and it isn't close: 100+ providers and models against our four direct families, free and self-hostable when procurement or data residency rules out a hosted product, with years of community and integration head start. Its enforcement is real and native — budget hard-stops and guardrails in the OSS core, not something you build. What you build yourself on top is the governance: the approval workflow, the role model, the reporting, and the signed record. Wardin ships that as the product, not the homework.
Wardin turns enforcement into governance you can defend: a budget exception is requested, approved for a bounded window, and auto-reverts at expiry with its full history retained, so finance can see who raised a limit and when. Every gateway-routed call — allowed or blocked — emits an ED25519-signed, hash-chained receipt, and exact-plus-semantic cache savings are reported split by risk rather than blended. Those are managed-product capabilities LiteLLM leaves you to assemble and self-host, not features in the OSS core.
Choose LiteLLM if you need the widest provider coverage, must self-host, or want a free OSS gateway and are content to operate budgets, guardrails, and reporting yourself. Choose Wardin when you'd rather not be the one operating and vouching for all of that: a hosted, zero-ops product with time-bounded budget approvals that auto-revert, org-level RBAC, and a signed audit chain over the enforcement, on the providers that carry most production LLM spend. LiteLLM gives you the parts. Wardin gives you the record that ties them together — and proves it.