Self-host vs Cloud

BitRouter's core is identical whether you self-host the binary or use the hosted service. Every routing, fallback, model-variant, BYOK, local-model, guardrail, observability, MCP, ACP, and structured-output capability works exactly the same either way. The open-source binary is Apache 2.0 and free — bring your own keys or run a local model and you owe nothing beyond your own providers.

A Cloud account is not a different product. It's an account and a provider network you can attach to any binary — including a self-hosted one — with bitrouter auth login. What it adds is operational and commercial, not gated inference features.

What a Cloud account adds

• SLA — an uptime commitment on the hosted endpoint.
• Team seats & roles — shared workspaces with per-member access control.
• Priority support — direct support channels.
• Managed billing — one wallet, billed per request; failed requests aren't billed.
• Hosted provider network — the managed provider (one account, no upstream keys), discounted models (25% off open models), and agentic payment (x402/MPP pay-per-use marketplace).

None of these gate the core. You can run the open-source binary self-hosted and attach a Cloud account to it whenever you want the hosted network — the binary doesn't change.

Comparison

The — rows are commercial and network features, not core inference capabilities — those are all ✅/✅.

Ready to run it? See Installation.