Benchmarks are not just about raw overhead. The more useful question is which gateway helps a team control price, fallback, governance, and routing without turning the stack into another operational tax.
| Dimension | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Latency | Low overhead matters, but not more than routing logic that avoids expensive lanes. |
| Governance | Budgets, quotas, and spend visibility matter just as much as provider count. |
| Routing | Price-aware and quality-aware policies create the real economic difference. |
| Scalability | Open-source flexibility only matters if it holds up under real throughput. |