Maxim

Maxim, built by H3 Labs Inc., offers Bifrost, an open-source LLM gateway licensed under Apache 2.0 that gives applications a single layer for accessing many model providers. It can be started locally with npx @maximhq/bifrost, and an enterprise edition is offered with a 14-day free trial request.

What It Is

Bifrost is an AI gateway that sits between applications and model providers. The site describes a unified API across providers, so teams can switch models without changing code. It also supports custom deployed models. Maxim describes itself as building an AI evaluation and observability platform, with Bifrost as the gateway product featured on its homepage.

How It Fits Into an Existing Stack

Bifrost is positioned as a drop-in replacement for existing AI SDKs. The homepage shows pointing the OpenAI client at a Bifrost deployment base URL, and says it works with OpenAI, Anthropic, Vercel AI SDK, LangChain, LangGraph, LiteLLM and Google GenAI. Provider fallback provides automatic failover between providers.

Governance, Security and MCP

Virtual keys carry independent budgets and access control, and spending limits can be tracked across teams, projects and models. Enterprise capabilities listed include SSO-based access control, audit logs, guardrails and adaptive load balancing. A built-in MCP gateway centralizes MCP tool connections, authentication and policy enforcement. The FAQ states that in-VPC deployments keep data within the customer's environment.

Performance and Observability

Maxim states Bifrost adds about 11 microseconds of overhead at 5k RPS on a t3.xlarge machine, and publishes a benchmark claiming it is 50x faster than LiteLLM at 500 RPS on identical hardware. Observability comes from OpenTelemetry support and a built-in dashboard, with semantic caching and telemetry documented.