Merge Gateway Opens Startup Credit Program

Free credits lower the barrier to testing LLM infrastructure before usage costs become a scaling problem, but the bigger pitch is avoiding provider lock-in from day one.

• –One integration provides access to major LLM providers through a shared endpoint
• –Automatic routing and failover can improve reliability as model APIs change
• –Spend caps and request-level logs help startups control unpredictable inference costs
• –The program positions Gateway against self-hosted options such as LiteLLM by emphasizing managed governance and operations
• –Teams should compare the long-term platform fee and migration costs before making Gateway a core dependency