kaeso

The open-source AI gateway you run yourself

One OpenAI-, Anthropic-, Gemini- and ElevenLabs-compatible API in front of every provider, for chat, embeddings, images, video, speech, transcription and music, with single sign-on, roles, budgets, alias routes, request logs, a playground and an MCP portal, in one Rust process.

Website · Documentation · Live demo · Discussions · Changelog

Install

On a server or your computer with Docker and Compose 2.24 or newer:

curl -fsSL https://kaeso.app/install.sh | sh

It installs Kaeso with PostgreSQL, ClickHouse and Valkey into ./kaeso, starts it at https://localhost and prints the link that creates the first user. Add -s -- --domain kaeso.example.com to serve your own domain. The quick start continues from there, and install by hand shows each step.

On a cloud or a hosting platform, the platform templates run the same release:

Render · Railway · DigitalOcean · Fly.io · AWS · Azure · Google Cloud · Coolify · Dokploy · CapRover

Send your first request

Point the OpenAI SDK at Kaeso and call any model in your project, Claude included:

from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(base_url="https://kaeso.example.com/v1", api_key="sk-kso-…")
print(client.responses.create(model="claude-haiku-5-5", input="Hello").output_text)

The Anthropic SDK works the same way with base_url="https://kaeso.example.com". Kaeso translates the request and the reply between the formats (calling models).

Built in are Anthropic, Baseten, Cerebras, Cohere, DeepSeek, ElevenLabs, Fireworks AI, Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, Google AI Studio, Groq, Hugging Face, MiniMax, Mistral, Moonshot, Nebius Token Factory, NVIDIA, Ollama Cloud, OpenAI, OpenRouter, QwenCloud, SambaNova, Scaleway, SiliconFlow, SpaceX (xAI), Together AI, Vercel and Z.ai (supported providers). A server of your own, such as vLLM, Ollama, LM Studio or llama.cpp, joins as a custom provider.

The console

The pages below show the console with sample data. The live demo is a read-only install to try it yourself.

Analytics Requests, tokens, cost and errors per organization, project, model and member, against the period before.	Playground Try any model in the project, up to four side by side, for text, images, speech, music, transcription and video.
Request logs Every request with its model, status, tokens, cost, timing and caller, and its content and media if you keep them.	Models A catalogue per project with the prices and capabilities of every model from KPMR, the Kaeso Provider & Model Registry.
Alias routes Name the models behind an alias, with fallbacks, conditions on headers and tokens, and weighted splits.	Limits and budgets Hard or soft spend, token and rate limits per project, member, service account or key, checked before the provider is called.

How it works

flowchart LR
  accTitle: How Kaeso sits between apps and providers
  accDescr: Apps, SDKs and coding tools call the gateway in the OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini or ElevenLabs format, and MCP clients call its MCP portal. The gateway resolves the model, checks rights and limits, calls the provider in its own format, and writes usage and logs to PostgreSQL, ClickHouse and Valkey, which the console reads.
  apps[Apps, SDKs and coding tools]:::outside
  mcp[MCP clients]:::outside
  subgraph install [Your Kaeso install]
    direction LR
    gateway[Gateway]:::accent
    console[Console]
    data[(PostgreSQL, ClickHouse, Valkey)]
    gateway --- data
    console --- gateway
  end
  providers[Model providers]:::outside
  servers[Your MCP servers]:::outside
  apps -- OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini or ElevenLabs format --> gateway
  mcp -- MCP --> gateway
  gateway -- the provider's format --> providers
  gateway -- MCP --> servers

How it compares

Checked on 6 November 2026 against each project's repository and documentation. Open an issue when a row is out of date.

Works with

In this repository

Architecture explains how the parts fit, and contributing how to work in them.

Community

• Discussions for questions, ideas and what you built.
• @kaesoapp on X for releases.
• Good first issues to start contributing, with the contributing guide.

License

MIT. The Kaeso name and logo are not covered by the license. All trademarks belong to their owners; Kaeso is not affiliated with any provider or client it names. Third-party notices, trademarks included, are in NOTICE.md.