Leanroute vs Together AI
Multi-provider gateway vs open-weight inference host.
Together AI hosts a large catalog of open-weight models (Llama, Mixtral, Qwen, DeepSeek, Yi, Nous, community fine-tunes) with per-token pricing and fine-tuning support. Leanroute is a gateway that reaches every major closed-model provider plus APAC through one OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Different tools; teams often use both.
Snapshot date: August 2026. Together provider adapter is on the v2 roadmap — once shipped, you'll route to Together's models via Leanroute the same way you route to OpenAI.
TL;DR
Pick Together if your workload is exclusively OSS models, you need fine-tuning, or you want the deepest OSS catalog (100+ models incl. community fine-tunes). Pick Leanroute if your app calls closed models (OpenAI/Anthropic/Google/xAI), needs MCP passthrough, uses APAC providers, or wants per-org guardrails + spend caps + a single billing surface. Use both (once Leanroute's Together adapter ships) — Leanroute routes closed models to their native providers, OSS models to Together.
Where we differ
| Dimension | Leanroute | Together AI |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Multi-provider gateway (11 providers) | Open-weight inference host (100+ OSS models) |
| Closed-model providers | OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI — all first-class | Not supported (Together hosts open-weight only) |
| Open-weight model catalog | Covers Llama and Mistral via provider adapters (roadmap) | 100+ OSS models — Llama, Mixtral, Qwen, DeepSeek, Yi, Nous, MythoMax |
| Fine-tuning | Not offered | Yes — LoRA fine-tunes on their infrastructure |
| Wire format | OpenAI-compatible | OpenAI-compatible |
| Native MCP passthrough | Yes on Anthropic models | Not supported |
| Cross-provider failover | Automatic — 5xx on one provider retries on same-tier alt | Within Together only |
| Guardrails library | 7 curated rules (PII, secrets, prompt-injection, moderation, etc.) | No first-party library |
| APAC providers first-class | Qwen, GLM, Doubao, Kimi, Sarvam, Krutrim | Some Qwen + DeepSeek variants; no Sarvam/Krutrim/Doubao |
| Data residency | Singapore | US-hosted (SOC 2, HIPAA) |
Where Together still wins
- OSS catalog depth. 100+ open-weight models including community fine-tunes (Nous Hermes, MythoMax) we don't carry.
- Fine-tuning. LoRA fine-tunes on their infra with an OpenAI-compatible endpoint out. Nothing comparable on our side.
- Compliance. SOC 2 + HIPAA today. We're SOC 2 Type I planned Q3 2026, HIPAA not on the roadmap.
- Batch API + embeddings + code models. Broader inference surface (image gen, embeddings, rerankers, code completion) than our chat-completions-first gateway.
See also: vs Groq · vs Vercel AI · vs OpenRouter