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The LLM Gateway is a single address for every model call your organization makes. Your agents, your apps, and the coding tools people run on their computers (Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode) call it with an xpander key instead of a provider key. Each call is checked against your organization’s settings, sent to the provider on the right key, and recorded under the person who made it.

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What happens to each call

  1. Who is calling. The key on the call identifies the caller: a person’s API key, an agent’s run, or an organization API key. An unknown, revoked or expired key is refused.
  2. What they may use. The model is checked against the models your organization turned on and the person’s groups. A model name can be an alias your admins defined.
  3. Who pays. A person’s own Claude plan (where xpander has enabled it), a provider key your organization stored, or xpander’s key billed in credits (Licenses and who pays). Callers never hold a provider key.
  4. Budgets. The budgets of the organization, the group, the person, the agent and the key are checked before the call leaves (Budgets).
  5. Fallbacks. When the provider is overloaded or fails, the call is retried, then tried on the alias’s next model.
  6. The record. One record per call: who, what started it, which client, model and provider, tokens, cost and timings (Usage and logs).
Prompt and response text is saved with each request, encrypted, unless an admin turns off Saved prompt text for the account or for a group. Model calls xpander makes for your organization, such as conversation summaries, also go through the gateway and show in Logs with a System badge.

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Cloud, Hybrid and Air-Gapped

On Hybrid and Air-Gapped installs, the gateway is part of the chart. Self-hosted explains how to turn it on.

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Where each setting lives

All of them are under Platform > AI governance, except the last two, which are in Settings in Xpander Chat. On a self-hosted install, use your own Platform and Xpander Chat addresses.

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Get started

  1. Connect a provider. In Models, choose Add provider and add a key. On xpander cloud you can also start on the models included with xpander.
  2. Turn on models. Tick the models people may use, and choose Who may use it… to limit them to groups.
  3. Add an alias (optional), such as default-coding with a fallback.
  4. Set budgets and policies in Budgets and Policies.
  5. Connect a coding tool. In AI models & keys, pick a client under Connect a client and choose Copy setup command (Connect your tools).
  6. Check it. Your first request shows at the top of Logs.
When something is refused, Errors and what to do lists every message. What is stored and who can see it is on Security and privacy.